Pope calls for path to peace in Libya; bishop urges U.S. forces to limit harm
Catholic san Francisco
(CNS PHOTO/YURIKO NAKAO, REUTERS)
Northern California’s Weekly Catholic Newspaper
Elementary school children’s bags are seen gathered at the site of Okawa Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi prefecture, Japan, March 28. About 80 percent of the students and teachers were killed or are missing after the school was devastated by a tsunami following the March 11 earthquake. Japan’s National Police Agency confirmed 11,004 people dead and 17,339 missing in the disaster. As of March 27, there were nearly 181,000 survivors in shelters and more than 177,000 had fled an evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex. The zone was expanded March 27 as highly radioactive water was found for the first time outside one of the reactor buildings at the quake-damaged plant.
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI appealed for a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Libya, saying peaceful means should be tried to support “even the weakest signs” of openness to reconcile on both sides. Following the Angelus prayer March 27, the pope also noted recent incidents of violence in the Middle East and urged all parties in the region to follow the path of dialogue “in the search for a just and brotherly coexistence.” Ongoing clashes between pro- and anti-government crowds in Syria have resulted in dozens of deaths in the southern town of Daraa, with an additional 12 fatalities reported Sunday in the port city of Latakia. In Washington, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee. urged the Obama administration to use force in Libya that is “proportionate to the goal of protecting civilians.” In a March 24 letter to National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, Bishop Hubbard said the use of military force must be continually evaluated in light of these questions: “Is it producing evils graver than the evil it hopes to address?” and “What are the implications of the use of force for the future welfare of the Libyan people and the stability of the region?” “We know these are difficult questions to which there are few easy answers, but it is our moral responsibility as a nation to rigorously examine the use of military force in light of the need to protect human life and dignity,” he said. – Compiled by Catholic San Francisco
Long war’s moral risk America needs a sustained national dialogue about the war Afghanistan, not only because the conflict is a decade old but also because of the chilling prospect that warfare has become routine, Auxiliary Bishop Robert W. McElroy says in an essay reprinted from America magazine (Page 12).
By Valerie Schmalz Carl Wilkens stayed behind during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the only American known to have remained during the entire 100 days. “It’s a great thing to do, to pray for people, but I could do more than pray - I could stay,” said Wilkens, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary. On the first night of the genocide the Wilkens’ neighbors, a Tutsi banker and his wife, were killed by machete-wielding Hutu paramilitary gangs. “They draped her lifeless body over the fence,” Wilkens told Mercy San Francisco students March 24, adding that the slain couple had saved their children by boosting them over a fence. Wilkens stopped at the high school on his travels across the U.S. to share his experiences in Rwanda. His goal: To teach young people in particular about the importance of trying to understand how other people think and thus to move away from the mindset that sees others as so much trouble that they would be better off eliminated. The way to break the cycle of dehumanization is “to learn people’s stories, understand how they feel and think
and act,” Wilkens said. “You can’t change the feeling without looking at the thinking.” Wilkens was the head of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency and had been living for four years in Rwanda with his wife and three small children when the killing began. The second night of the genocide, the gangs came to get the Wilkens. “Unbeknownst to us that Thursday night, they came to our house,” Wilkens said during the presentation organized by Mercy religious studies teacher Jim McGarry as part of a year-long module on the World War II Jewish Holocaust and modern-day genocides. “They came to our gate. Our neighbors who came out to help were not a bunch of men; they were a bunch of ladies. They did not come out with machetes, they came out with stories,” Wilkens said. The neighbors’ accounts of how the Wilkens children played with their children, about how Wilkens and his wife Teresa brought neighbors to the hospital and performed “small acts of kindness” were what saved the family that night. “These ladies re-humanized us,” Wilkens said. “We didn’t know about it until the next morning.”
(PHOTO COURTESY CARL WILKENS)
Lessons in Christian witness from man who stayed behind in Rwanda
Carl Wilkens with Tabithe during a recent reunion in Rwanda. Wilkens stayed behind to try to protect Tabithe from the genocide against Tutsis. The genocide occurred after years of rivalry between the majority Hutu and minority Tutsi population and was worsened by favoritism toward the Tutsis during Belgium’s colonial rule. The horror of 800,000 killed RWANDA, page 6
INSIDE THIS WEEK’S EDITION On the Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Local students fight poverty . 7 Seton development plan . . . . 8
Sts. Peter and Paul tower restoration ~ Page 10 ~ Tim Navone’s vision for Marin Catholic ~ Page 3 ~ April 1, 2011
Remembering my father, cathedral architect ~ Page 9 ~
How populated is hell? . . . . 13 Fr. Serra’s ‘heroic virtue’ . . . 10 Afghan war’s civilian cost . . 16 Service directory . . . . . . . . . 18
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