Inside
NCR
NCR staffers had
smiles on their faces Oct. 11 after learning the paper's petition (and staff
prayers) had been answered with a Nobel Peace Prize for Bishop Carlos Filipe
Ximenes Belo of Dili, East Timor. He, along with exiled East Timorese activist
Jose Ramos Horta, was awarded the prize days after NCR called for the
move (NCR, Oct. 11).
NCR has been one of the few U.S. publications to regularly
report on the outrageous human rights violations occurring in isolated East
Timor where over 90 percent of the population is Catholic.
As a candidate in 1992, President Clinton said of East Timor, "I
think we have ignored it in ways that I think are unconscionable." As
President, he has approved more than $470 million in U.S. arms sales to the
Suharto dictatorship, and is pushing the pending sale of F-16 fighter
planes.
U.S. government support for Suharto has been bipartisan. In 1994,
Sen. Bob Dole helped kill legislation that would have barred the use of
U.S.-supplied weapons in East Timor. Republican Congressional leaders have
joined with the administration to try to prevent conscientious House and Senate
members of both parties from restricting U.S. arms sales to Indonesia.
Pope John Paul II's surgery
underscores an interesting fact -- nothing in canon law provides for an
incapacitated pontiff. The Secretariat of State, headed by Cardinal Angelo
Sodano, would continue running the day-to-day business of the church. Papal
approval would be needed, however, for nominations of bishops and other top
officials.
Church law does provide that the chamberlain takes charge between
the death of one pope and the election of a successor. The post of chamberlain
has been held since 1993 by Cardinal Eduardo Martinez Somalo, a Spaniard based
at the Vatican.
Church law does provides for a resignation, with canon law saying:
"If it should happen that the Roman pontiff resigns his office, it is required
for validity that he makes the resignation freely and that it be duly
manifested, but not that it be accepted by anyone."
Finally, it pleases me to announce
that NCR has opened a West Coast Bureau in Los Angeles staffed by Latin
America editor and staff writer Leslie Wirpsa. Until last month Wirpsa worked
out of our Kansas City, Mo., home office. The new bureau is one more
acknowledgment of the importance of California's growing and changing Catholic
population. Wirpsa can be reached by writing her at: 2336 Scarff St., Los
Angeles, CA 90007, or through E-mail at lesliewirp@aol.com (These addresses are
also listed on the NCR masthead on page 4.)
-- Tom Fox
National Catholic Reporter, October 25,
1996
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