Bishop blames Smith

Press, 16 August 1976, Page 6

Bishop blames Smith

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury’ The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Umtali has told the Rhodesian Prim** Minister (Mr lan Sb.ith) that his regime is “racist and oppressive” and must bear the guilt of the .nisery and bloodshed engulfing southern Africa, United Press International reports. In an open letter to Mr Smith, published and read yesterday, Archbishop Donal Lamont said it was “understandable” the blacks in Rhodesia had turned to guerrilla war to fight the white-supremacist regime. He said Mr Smith had “degraded” blacks, and made them “second-cla citizens in the country of their birth.” “As a Catholic bishop, I cannot be silent while civil discontent, racial tensions, and violence are so much in evidence and daily on the increase,” Archbishop Lamont said. “Conscience compels me to state that your Administration, by its clearly racist and oppressive policies and bv its stubborn refusal to change, is largely’ responsible for the injustices which have provoked the present disorder, and in that measure may be considered guilty of whatever misery or bloodshed may follow.” Archbishop Lamont, a 65-year-old native of Ballycastle, Ireland, who has spent 20 years in Rhodesia as Bishop of Umtali, said he deplored all acts of violence. “However, I must r. 'c?t no matter what the consequences for myself, that the institutional violence sanctioned by your Administration and made respectable bv acts of Parliament is itself the root cause of most of the physical violence which Rhodesia has experienced during the past 10 years."