MARCH/APRIL 2005

March 1st, 2005

In this issue Barbara Hungin writes on the MakePovertyHistory campaign. Coaches are travelling to Edinburgh from several centres in the diocese f

EDITORIAL In this issue Barbara Hungin writes on the MakePovertyHistory campaign. Coaches are travelling to Edinburgh from several centres in the diocese for the national demonstration on July 2. For those who can’t make the journey, Fr Terence Richardson OSB is organising a vigil at Osmotherley for the night of July 1-2. Please try to support the campaign in some way. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor has written: “In 2005 there is an unprecedented opportunity to end the extreme poverty and suffering of millions of members of our human family. Events this year mean that there is finally the chance to win debt cancellation, trade justice and a doubling of overseas aid – essential steps that could lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty.” More than 220 organisations world wide are joining together to support this campaign.

Nan Saeki will be one of the speakers at our Hull meeting this month. If you can’t get there, she gives us a moving account of her prison visiting.

The Global Week of Action on Trade Justice brings together people from across the world to put unfair trade at the top of the political agenda through lobbies, vigils and other events. Please support this by ensuring that your church serves only Fair Trade tea and coffee.

Finally, thank you very much to all those who have sent donations towards the cost of producing and sending out the newsletter. It is greatly appreciated. May I wish all our readers a very happy Easter. Chris Dove Note: the views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily coincide with those of the Commission.

MakePovertyHistory Campaign

“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.” On February 3rd Nelson Mandela issued this rallying cry to ‘MAKE POVERTY HISTORY’ in front of over 22,000 people in Trafalgar Square. He then addressed the meeting of G7 Finance ministers the following day. ‘MAKE POVERTY HISTORY’ is this year’s campaign supported by CAFOD, Christian Aid, World Development Movement, Oxfam, Action Aid and many other organisations. Its aims are threefold: To change the rules and practices of unjust trade. To cancel poor countries’ debts. To deliver more and better aid. This is a crucial and exciting time as Britain takes on Presidency of the E.U. and hosts the G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel in July. The British Campaign is part of a global initiative and during the Global week of Action on Trade Justice (10th – 16th April) there will be events in 60 countries. On Saturday 9th April at York Minster – under the title ‘Big Vote for Trade Justice’ there will be a rally with music and drama and a central point for collecting completed voting cards; followed by a service at All Saints, Pavement, at 2.30p.m. The ballot cards collected will go down to London for the’ Wake up to Trade Justice Vigil’ – which is being held in Whitehall on the night of April 15th and will be presented to Downing Street on the morning of 16th. There will also be a week long Trade Justice Exhibition in York Minster from 9th – 16th April. On July 2nd a mass rally in Edinburgh is planned and coaches will be going from all over the area. The day’s events will include: rallies with international speakers, celebrity supporters and music. the creation of a giant human white band around Edinburgh city centre. entertainment, ‘market stalls’ and activities. an opportunity for you to send your messages directly to the G8 meeting. Up to date details of the Campaign can be accessed from the website – www.makepovertyhistory.org. Barbara

Why be a prison visitor?

When I was younger and thought about the ‘corporal works of mercy’ (are they still called that?), I would pass over the one about visiting the imprisoned, seeing it rather as something metaphorical, which meant visiting anyone who felt imprisoned, because of course it couldn’t be meant literally….So it came as something of a shock to find myself involved in the issue, especially, of women in prison, through the work I was doing for CASC (the former Catholic Agency for Social Concern, now called Caritas – Social Action). Our J & P group here in York had made a few visits to the Chaplaincy Centre at Full Sutton prison – a maximum security prison outside York – at the request of the Anglican chaplain there. Although I found the visits interesting, I was not tempted to become a visitor to such a place. But it did make me aware of the desire and need of some prisoners to talk to someone from ‘outside’.

We have a women’s open prison in our parish and our parish priest is the Catholic chaplain there. I also knew one of the other chaplains (a lovely elderly sister from the Bar Convent), and after attending a Prisons’ Week service and carol service at the prison, I offered myself as a visitor. It took about six months to get my criminal record checked…and then I started. That was almost five years ago and I have now been a visitor for seven different women (three of whom were in with their babies) and have also made the acquaintance of several more through the church and through taking the occasional service at the prison when the chaplains couldn’t cover them.

I suppose the biggest difference it has made is that I no longer see prisoners as a group apart, but people like you and me, many of whom have sad and even tragic backgrounds. At the very least, most of them come from dysfunctional families and the majority are there because of a crime committed at someone else’s behest. Ah, another bleeding-heart liberal, do I hear you say? Well, just look at the statistics. That’s all I ask. I am not exaggerating. Many of the women lose their homes, their partners, even their children when they come to prison for any length of time. Many are in for drug offences such as carrying drugs from one country to another. In so many cases, poverty is the root of everything. One woman was offered £1000 to carry drugs; another was threatened that her son would be killed if she didn’t….There are many, many stories.

I have learnt so much by being a prison visitor. There is a real need for more visitors. We cannot even be sure our visits will do anything to change things in the future. Our role is not to judge or moralise about going down the straight and narrow. There may be opportunities to show another way of life, but there may not. It may just be our role to listen without comment. What I do know is that any one of these women could be me, or my daughters or sisters or friends if we, too, had been brought up in an atmosphere of fear, or poverty, of insecurity, of deprivation. When the model for success is not being found out or having one’s lies believed, prison is not going to do much to change ideas radically but it is just possible that you and I may be able to do something towards offering another way of living, just by being there for someone. Nan Get a grip on your money!

The benefits of becoming a regular saver include breaking a habit of borrowing and learning the habit of saving. Savings and Loan Clubs or People’s Banks [also known as Credit Unions] are a way in which local people can save money together and lend that money to each other. Credit Unions are run by members for members and can help when people are overburdened with debt.

“Choose life not death”

In the last issue I wrote that nations have to choose how to spend their resources. Ellen Teague of the Columbans Faith & Justice Team makes the same point. She writes: “With the finiteness of the resources of the planet, and the climate changes expected by global warming, there really is a choice between spending on the military or spending to meet the Millennium Development Goals which include reducing by half the number of people on the planet without access to sufficient food and clean water. The death count for the tsunami is equivalent to the number of people who die of hunger-related conditions worldwide every week and yet the latter do not attract the resources and political will necessary to alleviate their suffering. The UK’s Trident nuclear weapon system costs £1.4 billion every year. This dwarfs the £75 million promised by the UK government to the tsunami hit area this year. US aid pledges to the disaster zone are equivalent to one and a half days of spending on the Iraq war.” It was President Eisenhower who said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold an not clothed.” There is the stark choice. “Choose life” is a quotation from Deuteronomy 30. It is also the motto for our diocese. Source: Vocation for Justice Spring 2005

Water – source of life A human can survive for around a month without food, but only five to seven days without water. Access to water is considered a basic human right, but supplies of fresh water are finite. According the UN, the world’s population has grown from one billion in 1804, to two billion in the 1920s and six billion in 1999. From the early 19th century to date, the world’s supply of freshwater has remained constant and our population survives on the same volume of water today. International competition for this scarce resource is growing and as the population rises, the emphasis of scientific research in this area shifts towards conservation, reclaiming, recycling and re-use. Another global issue is that of climate change, and in particular, how the world’s oceans, which contain 97.5% of the earth’s water, are going to respond to these changes. Source: Imperial College magazine.

Nuclear Weapons Treaty Review Conference On 2 May in New York there will be another Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ratified in 1970. The NPT was framed as a bargain. The non-nuclear powers would not seek to acquire nuclear weapons; for their part, nuclear weapon states (NWS) would, by negotiation, get rid of theirs. At the 2000 Review Conference the NWS made an unequivocal explicit undertaking to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all nations are committed under Article VI of the NPT. Sadly, there have never been any negotiations aimed at the elimination of all nuclear weapons; there have only been negotiations directed to specific aspects of nuclear danger – making the case for stronger and more effective counter-proliferation measures and emphasising the importance of compliance with the treaty by the non nuclear powers. Bruce Kent (honorary vice president of Pax Christi) writing on the 2005 Review Conference, points out that, “The overwhelming majority of the world’s countries have always called for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. A draft treaty which covers all the contentious issues of verification, inspection and policing has been carefully prepared and lodged with the UN by Costa Rica. All the groundwork has been done. What is lacking is the will of the nuclear powers. Abolition 2000 is circulating a national petition for the beginning of nuclear abolition negotiations. It ought to be signed by millions and presented to the 2005 Review Conference.” Over 50 years ago, less than two weeks after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Prime Minister Clement Attlee said in a memo: “We should declare that this invention has made it essential to end wars. The new world order must start now.” In 1993 Archbishop Martino, Vatican Representative at the UN said: “The most perilous of all the Cold War assumptions … is the belief that the strategy of nuclear deterrence is essential to a nation’s security… nuclear deterrence prevents genuine nuclear disarmament.” Source: Vocation for Justice

Response to tsunami Whilst the amounts of aid raised to date are impressive we must remember that in some countries this event has totally destroyed any development gains made in the last 10 to 15 years. Countries such as Sri Lanka and Thailand are among the poorest in the world and have debts to the IMF, World Bank and rich nations that are crippling at the best of times. The casualty figures of this disaster are horrifying. Equally horrifying is the fact that approximately 210,000 people throughout the world die each week because of poverty. Source: Shared Interest QR54

Promises, Promises…. Oxfam says some 45 million children around the world will die over the next decade because rich countries like the US, UK, Germany and Japan have failed to meet their aid promises. According to “Paying the Price” a new report from Oxfam, “In 1970 the G8 countries pledged to make available 0.7% of gross national product for aid. Thirty-four years on, none … have reached this target.” The aid budgets of rich nations are half of what they were in 1960. Death Penalty USA Since the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 946 people have been executed. In Connecticut, Catholic bishops have urged the state’s more than 1 million Catholics to make their voices heard by calling for the repeal of the death penalty. “The death penalty diminishes each of us,” said Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport. “It offers the tragic illusion that we can defend life by taking life.” In Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter on the value of human life, Evangelium Vitae, he argued that “ punishment ought not to go to the extreme of executing the offender, except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.” Source: NCR 28 Jan 2005

Commission contacts Barbara Hungin Chair 01642 784398 Sr Mary Walmsley CJ Secretary 01904 464917 Nan Saeki Treasurer 01904 783621 Chris Dove Editor 01947 825043 email: dove.whitby@ukgateway.net or 22 Blackburns Yard Whitby YO22 4DS website:www.ayton.info/middlesbroughjp

CHURCH POINTS THE WAY ON ASYLUM

That was the title of the Editorial in a recent issue of The Tablet. Inside there was a heartening report of how one parish in Clifton diocese, St Nicholas of Tolentino in Bristol, has been supporting asylum seekers for the past three years. Led by its justice & peace group and with the whole-hearted support of the parish priest, Fr Richard McKay, the parish has given sanctuary to a young Ruandan woman whose request for asylum had been denied and who was threatened with deportation. Fr McKay had said he would go to prison rather than hand her over to the authorities. Generous financial support comes from the diocesan J&P Commission and from other parishes in the diocese, who also carry out research and other administration tasks.

A woman from Cameroon whose husband had been killed in police custody produced a death certificate signed by a hospital director which stated that her husband’s fatal wounds had been sustained in captivity. The Immigration & Nationality assessors rejected this document on the grounds that official documents are often forged in Cameroon. She too had been imprisoned. Her application for asylum and subsequent appeal have been refused and the official National Asylum Support Service has withdrawn assistance and she has been told she will be deported. The parish is supporting her and her solicitor is trying to make a fresh appeal.

Fr McKay says of the British system “It is inhuman and against everything we believe, especially as Catholics, part of a universal church. We need to stand against it.”

The Tablet added, “It should be the duty of every member of the clergy of whatever denomination to make clear to their congregations, as the election approaches, that the stereotyping and demonising of ‘immigrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ is unacceptable and unethical. As soon as they come face to face with real asylum seekers, local communities are quick to see them as individual people in real need, and not public nuisances. That is the message the Churches have to put across, with some urgency.” That is certainly the experience of those of us who have had the pleasure of entertaining them. Source: The Tablet 12 February

Commission Meetings in 2005 19 Mar Hull. St Stephens Speakers from J&P Commission. 21 May Middlesbrough. St Francis of Assisi AGM & “Make Poverty History” CAFOD Campaign Lesley Ann Knights 16 July Filey. Mercy Convent Day of Reflection. With Fr Tony Storey 17 Sept Middlesbrough. St Francis of Assisi Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture. 19 Nov York. Students from All Saints School Commission meetings are open to everyone and usually begin at 10 for 10.30, finishing by about 1pm.

A Prayer

God, our challenger, stir up our lives and shatter our complacency, that through the people we meet and the life stories we share we may be challenged to change and moved to action. AMEN Annabel Shilson-Thomas