Bethlehem pilgrims guarded

Press, 26 December 1985, Page 6

Bethlehem pilgrims guarded

NZPA-Reuter Bethlehem Crowds of Christmas worshippers celebrated Midnight Mass in St Catherine’s Basilica and in clear frosty weather thousands joined in prayers in the square outside. Israeli tourist officials reported a 20 per cent drop in' holiday visitors, blaming fears roused by hijackings in the Middle East in the last few months.

But by nightfall the Judean hill-top town had filled with pilgrims. The Most Rev. Giacomo Beltritti, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, celebrated the Midnight Mass at St Catherine’s, next to the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the grotto revered as Christ’s birthplace. Thousands of Christians unable to get into the church stood shoulder-to-shoulder in Manger Square, where a huge television screen next to a 20-metre Christmas tree relayed the service.

The Israeli military was taking no chances. / Troops lined roof-tops overlooking Manger Square while J' other soldiers patrolled the town’s winding alleyways. • In Shepherds’ Field, on the occupied West Bank, Pilgrims gathered to sing carols and pray on Christmas Eve where tradition says the shepherds first learned of the birth of Jesus.

On Christmas Eve, Protestant and Catholic services are conducted in Shepherds’ Field, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, thought for centuries to be the field where the Gospel of Luke says shepherds guarding their flocks at night received the first news of Jesus’ birth.

About 100 pilgrims attended outdoor services in the crisp, night air, guarded by a dozen armed Israeli soldiers. • Thousands of Chinese Catholics crowded into Peking’s former . Beitang Cathedral to celebrate Midnight Mass for the first time in 27 years. The newly restored church, closed down by Maoist zealots in 1958 ana used periodically since as a

warehouse, was packed to the doors as the rafters rang to the singing of “Silent Night” and “O, Come All Ye Faithful.” The 90-minute Mass;, in Latin except for a few Chinese hymns, was celebrated by the Bishop of Peking, Michael Fu Tieshan.

He is a member of the Patriotic Catholic Church, set up by the Communist State after it expelled foreign missionaries and broke with the Vatican in the 19505. There are estimated to be three million Catholics in China. An unknown number is still loyal to Rome.

Stewards held back thousands of Catholics unable to find places in the church, which was. built in 1887.

• Mother Teresa, saying that she wanted A.I.D.S. patients “to live and die in peace,” opened a hospice in Manhattan yesterday to care for victims of the fatal syndrome. “We want that nobody dies unloved and uncared for,” she said outside the 14bed hospice at St Veronica’s Church. “Because Jesus was also born, so I wanted also to

help them to be born in joy and love and peace.” Earlier, the founder of the Missionary Sisters of Charity persuaded New York’s Governor, Mr Mario Cuomo, to grant medical furloughs to three state prisoners stricken by A.I.D.S. Two of them were likely to be transferred to the new hospice, she said. Mother Teresa, whose order assists slum-dwellers in Calcutta, referred to the hospice in the Greenwich Village section as a “guesthouse” where people with A.I.D.S. would be given spiritual comfort as well as medical aid.

The hospice is being supported by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and Cardinal John O’Connor said that the archdiocese would try to open as many hospices for A.I.D.S. patients as it could. The sentiment emphasised by Mother Teresa, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, was one of mercy towards A.I.D.S. patients. “We are hoping that they will be able to live and die in peace by getting tender love and care,” she said.

• The British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, told the Falkland Islanders in a Christmas message yesterday that they had been let down by Britain’s friends. She criticised those friends and allies that voted against Britain last month on a United Nations resolution that calls on Britain to negotiate with Argentina on sovereignty over the South Atlantic archipelago. Australia, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Trinidad, and Turkey, who had abstained on a pro-Argentine resolution last year, supported this year’s resolution. She did not identify any countries by name.

The United States also supported the resolution. Mrs Thatcher, who has refused to discuss sovereignty since Britain defeated Argentina in 1982, repeated her determination to resist Argentina’s sovereignty claims and to protect the islanders’ right of freedom and democracy. The Argentinian-backed resolution calling for the two countries to negotiate “all aspects of the future of

the Falkland Islands” was adopted by a 107-4 vote with 41 abstentions. A British amendment endorsing the right to self-determination for the 1800 Falkland Islanders was defeated. The 15-minute broadcast to the Falklands on the 8.8.C.’s external service also included a message from the former Falklands Governor, Sir Rex Hunt, who retired several months ago.

• Peru announced yesterday a Christmas amnesty for 257 prisoners, including 56 Marxists “falsely” accused of terrorist activities, while putting 30,000 police on alert against fresh extremist violence.

The Justice Minister, Mr Luis Gonzales Posada, said that each amnestied prisoner had been given a copy of the national Constitution as he emerged from jail as well as a peace message wishing his reintegration into society.

® An unknown man gave a Christmas Eve present of SUSIO,OOO in ?10 notes to the poor and homeless at the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles yesterday.

“We asked him who he is, but he would not tell us,” said Clancy Imislund, who runs the mission. “He said if he told us it would take away his joy of giving.”

• Nine inmates who faced Christmas in jail after being arrested on minor offences got out yesterday when a benefactor paid their SUS4OOO ($7929) bail, continuing his 15-year-old tradition.

A businessman, Sal Miglio, said that the pleasure the gesture had brought him was “a feeling you can’t buy in a department store.” He began the tradition in 1970 after he heard during a Christmas party that some inmates at the Nassau Correctional Centre in New York did not have the several hundred dollars it would take to be released on bail for the holidays. “I was flabbergasted to learn they wouldn’t be home with their families because of a couple of hundred dollars,” said Mr Miglio, a real estate developer. An inmate who did not return for trial last year was the only person who had ever jumped bail after being freed by him for Christmas.

• A man who changed his name to Santa C. Claus and played the part for children and the elderly for nearly two decades was found dead in his hotel room, just two days before Christmas. He was 58.

Mr Claus changed his name from Leroy Scholtz five years ago. He lived in a red-and-white house in the New York state town of North Pole, where he worked at a tourist attraction called Santa’s Workshop from 1970 to 1979.

• A Manila fish market vendor shot dead an employee who kept nagging him for a special Christmas bonus.

The police said that according to other workers at a north Manila market the fishmonger, Renato Santos, had been exasperated by Lauro Cruz’s persistent demands for a “special present.” Instead of a few extra gave his ■ four bullets in the chest, arm and back