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Bishop, Nobel Prize winner join in appeal for action in Darfur crisi

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  • Bishop, Nobel Prize winner join in appeal for action in Darfur crisi

    Bishop, Nobel Prize winner join in appeal for action in Darfur crisis

    Catholic News Service
    29 Oct. 2004

    UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- A Catholic bishop, a Nobel Peace Prize winner
    and other religious and human rights leaders joined together at the
    United Nations Oct. 27 in a call for the international community to
    do more to end the crisis in western Sudan's Darfur region.

    The delegation -- which also included Muslim, Jewish and Christian
    leaders and members of the Save Darfur Coalition -- asked U.N.
    Secretary-General Kofi Annan to make a firm personal commitment to
    bring leadership to the United Nations to finally end the violence
    and suffering in Darfur.

    Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., representing the
    U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, joined Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel
    and others in calling for a clear U.N. mandate for the African Union
    to protect innocent civilians and for other financial and logistical
    support from the international community.

    Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, a Vatican representative to U.N. and
    humanitarian organizations based in Geneva, recently said 6,000 to
    10,000 refugees are dying each month in Darfur because of violence,
    lack of food and shortage of medicines. More than 2 million people
    have been driven from their homes, with many living in refugee camps
    in Chad and Sudan.

    Bishop Murphy was undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice
    and Peace at the Vatican from 1980 to 1987. He filled in at the meeting
    for Bishop John H. Ricard of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Fla., chairman
    of the USCCB Committee on International Policy, who could not attend.

    In a written message released by Bishop Murphy, Bishop Ricard called
    on "Catholics and all people of good will to do everything they can
    to help bring an end to the reign of terror confronting our brothers
    and sisters in Sudan."

    Specifically, he asked for increased pressure on the Sudanese
    government to achieve several goals: "saving innocent lives; allowing
    people to return home eventually in peace and security; protecting
    those languishing in camps for the internally displaced and those
    involved in the delivery of humanitarian relief; respecting cease-fire
    agreements and seeking a negotiated settlement between the government
    and the rebel groups; and holding responsible those who perpetrated
    atrocities and crimes against humanity."

    Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who won the peace prize in 1986, said at
    a press conference after the meeting that the group wanted to tell
    Annan "of our pain, of our anguish, of our outrage at the situation
    in Darfur," according to an Agence France-Presse report.

    "Some of us belong to the generation that has seen the indifference
    of the world," he said. "For me the indifference of the past in a
    source of anguish and despair. Therefore, if we speak today, it's
    because we say: No more indifference."

    Among those participating in the meeting were Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid
    of the Justice Committee for Majlis Ash-Shura of New York; Archbishop
    Kharjag Barsamian of the Armenian Church of America; Sara Bloomfield
    of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; and Tony Kireopoulos of the
    National Council of Churches.

    Other participants were Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World
    Service; Hannah Rosenthal of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs;
    Franciscan Father Michael Perry, policy adviser to the U.S. bishops
    on African affairs; the Rev. James Forbes of Riverside Church in New
    York; and David Rubenstein, coordinator of the Save Darfur Coalition,
    which is made up of more than 100 national faith-based and humanitarian
    organizations.
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