t eanc 0 VOL. 36, NO. 13
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Friday, March 13, 1992
FALL RIVER, MASS.
FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
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Fall River natives make difference in Jeremie By Pat McGowan
eNS Irish Tourist Board photo
GLENCOLUMBKILLE, COUNTY DONEGAL, on Ireland's west coast. In the words of an Irish poet, "How sweetly lies old Ireland, emerald green beyond the foam, awakening sweet memories, calling the heart back home."
"Cead mile failte" wished
to new immigrants By Msgr. George G. Higgins
Americans in 1892 and for several successive decades. Let me cite but one recent scholarly treatise which describes the plight of the immigrant Irish in the latter part of the 19th century. "It will seem strange to American descendants," we read in a 1960 book. "that for a long period their ancestors were ... classified in public documents as 'aliens.' The relationship of 'aliens' with crime and pauperism was generally applicable to the Catholic Irish as the particular source of offense.... "An uncomplimentary description of the Irish by a political enemy," the writer continues, "received wide circulation: 'The children of bigoted Catholic Ireland, like the frogs which were sent out as a plague against Pharoah ... arrive among us, too idle and vicious to clear and cultivate land .... [They) dump themselves down in our large village and towns, crowding the meanest sort of tenements and filling them with wretchedness and disease. In a political point of view, what are they but mere marketable cattle?''' That doesn't make for pleasant reading in 1992 but it does suggest, I think, that the present-day de~ CATECHUMENS PREPARING through the Rite of cendants of the poor Irish and Christian Initiation of Adults to receive the sacraments of other immigrants ought to have a initiation - baptism, Holy Eucharist and confi~mation - at special sympathy for the new aliens in our midst. the Easter Vigil gather to inscribe their names in the Book of And let us not forget - if we are the Elect during ceremonies Sunday at St. Mary's Cathedral, tempted to think this is none of the Fall River. Also participating in the Rite of Election and Call federal goverqment's business to Continuing Conversion were validly baptized non-Catholics that the survival and rapid adseeking to become members of the church and baptized· vancement of the Irish Catholic community in the United States Catholics preparing for full initiation into the church. At right furnished a test of the wisdom and is Father lon-Paul Gallant, director of the Diocesan Office of tough-minded strength of the naDivine Worship. Diocesan Administrator Msgr. Henry T. tion's Constitution, to which the Munroe was presiding celebrant at the ceremony, held each Irish appealed for the protection Turn to Page II year on the first Sunday of Lent. (Gaudette photo) The Catholic Church in the United States is still a church of immigrants, millions of new immigrants mainly, but not exclusively, from Latin America. Writing on this recently, I cited Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical "Centesimus Annus" on the church's responsibility (yours and mine) to address the immigrants' socioeconomic as well as spiritual needs. With apologies to readers of other ethnic origins than my own,
let me suggest in this pre-St. Patrick's Day column that IrishAmerican Catholics have more reason than almost any other segment of the U.S. population to take up the pope's challenge in this regard. Not so many years ago their own forebears were the victims of the worst kind of economic and social discrimination because of their alien status. The kind of prejudice that still victimizes many American blacks and new immigrants in 1992 victimized Irish-
Fall River natives Dr. Jeremiah J.Lowney Jr., and his wife Virginia now live in Lebanon, Conn., but still have a soft spot in their hearts for their natal city. The rest of their hearts belong to Jeremie, Haiti, one of the poorest cities in one of the poorest nations on Earth. Last Sunday they came to St. Vincent's Home in Fall River to tell members of Pax Christi of Southeastern Massachusetts about their work there. It is awesome. They started in 1987 with a barren Jeremie hilltop overlooking the blue Caribbean. Today a four-story medical-dental clinic constructed without blueprints or aid of architects crowns the hilltop. It includes a chapel, living quarters for the many unpaid American volunteers who aid the clinic and space for offices and satellite services. The entire concrete structure, wedged into an excavation on the hill, was built with pick and shovel labor: no earthmovers, no bulldozers, nQ cranes. It occupied an army of workers for months, as they wielded picks to crumble native rock sufficiently to make concrete, then transported the concrete to the building site. How did this amazing project start? Dr. Lowney, an orthodontist who practices in Norwich, Conn., and who is also an associate clinical professor of orthodontics at the University of Connecticut, visited Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, in 1984. He brought along dental equipment and said to a sister he met, "I'm a dentist. Is there anything I could do here?" "She looked at me," he related, and said, 'N obody ever comes here. God must have sent you.' " "I was hooked," he said. But the needs of Port-au-Prince proved overwhelming for American volunteers; and Dr. Lowney consulted with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who has convents in
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Haiti, regardmg other POSSibilitieS for service. She requested that he see what could be done in Jeremie, a seaport town in a remote area of southwestern Haiti. The Lowneys flew into Jeremie in a tiny plane, surveyed the situation and decided that, unlike Portau-Prince, it was a place where they could make a difference. The difference now includes, as well as the City of God medicaldental clinic, a roofed-over outpatient area on the three-acre clinic grounds, health outreach into the surrounding countryside and a flourishing Save-a-Family program providing about $300 annually to each family assisted. The money, amounting to .83 per day from each U.S. contributor to the Haitian Health Foundation, the umbrella organization that covers the Lowneys' activities in Jeremie, goes far in Haiti. It permits parents to provide schooling and basic food and clothing for their children; and on occasion it also saves lives. One man used $75 to pay for surgery for a strangulated hernia, thereafter enabling him to return to his $15 a month job, vital to his family's welfare. As president of the Haitian Health Foundation, Dr. Lowney is responsible for raising $300,000 to $400,000 annually to keep it going. He and his wife travel to Jeremie four times a year and all their four children have worked in the clinic. Jennifer, 25, now a dentist, helped with tooth extractions as a teen-ager, said her father. He said that very often she and visiting dentists from the States would set up shop with little more than forceps and a straight chair. Patients lined up, indicated their aching teeth and stoically endured the extraction process. "They have a very high tolerance for pain," said Dr. Lowney. Turn to Page II
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DR. JEREMIAH J. LOWNEY and his wife Virginia with a family that has been ~ided by the Save-a-Family Foundation.