NEWS STORY: Hillary Clinton announces Catholic-Orthodox relief effort in Bosnia

c. 1996 Religion News Service WASHINGTON (RNS)-Hillary Rodham Clinton, honoring the work of 30 religious and secular humanitarian groups working in Bosnia, said Monday the federal government will help finance the first joint Roman Catholic-Orthodox Christian relief program in the former Yugoslavia. Clinton, at a meeting and reception in the White House East Room, called […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)-Hillary Rodham Clinton, honoring the work of 30 religious and secular humanitarian groups working in Bosnia, said Monday the federal government will help finance the first joint Roman Catholic-Orthodox Christian relief program in the former Yugoslavia.

Clinton, at a meeting and reception in the White House East Room, called the joint initiative”a crucial step in promoting religious reconciliation.”It is this kind of courageous cooperation that must be emulated”throughout Bosnia, she said.


Clinton hosted the Jan. 29 meeting, which included representatives from numerous Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim and secular private agencies, to highlight the aid work many of the groups are doing in Bosnia.

The joint program will expand an existing Catholic Relief Services”Trauma Recovery Project.”The project trains mental health workers in Bosnia who help those traumatized by war. Catholic Relief Services will work with the International Orthodox Christian Charities in the venture.

Nancy Martin, a spokeswoman for CRS, said the program in Bosnia works with local Muslim, Catholic, Jewish and Orthodox groups but this was the first time it had cooperated with the international Orthodox charitable organization on a Bosnia project.”Our hope is to find an American Muslim organization to work with as well,”said Catholic Bishop John Ricard of Baltimore, the recently appointed chairman of Catholic Relief Services, who spoke at the White House event.

Brian Atwood, administrator of the Agency for International Development (AID), said the U.S. government will provide about $500,000 for the project.

The war in the former Yugoslavia generally pitted Orthodox Serbs, Roman Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims against one another. For some political and military leaders, the object of the war was to rid, or”cleanse,”their areas of people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds.”In Bosnia, everyone has been a victim of the war, regardless of their religion or ethnicity,”Ricard told Monday’s audience of more than 200.

He said Catholic Relief Services will spend $13 million in the former Yugoslavia during 1996. The money will go for programs aimed at helping to rebuild the shattered economies and infrastructure in the region and aiding reconciliation among the once-warring ethnic and religious parties.”Only when people achieve some measure of dignity and physical security can they entertain ideas of reconciliation,”Ricard said.

The Rev. Nicholas C. Triantafilou, chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South American, said the new Catholic-Orthodox initiative is”of unprecedented importance for peace. It has a significance that far surpasses the amount of money involved.” During the war, Triantafilou said,”for reasons of politics and nationalism, people were manipulating religious identities and symbols.”We must work to right the wrong,”he said, and”make religion the agent of healing and trust.” Julia Taft, president of InterAction, an umbrella organization of more than 160 groups, many of them involved in relief work in the former Yugoslavia, said the new U.S.-financed initiative is part of a sustained effort by groups to bring about rebuilding and reconciliation. The work ranges from rebuilding gas and sewer lines to aiding those who suffered physical or psychological harm in the war.”There are a range of initiatives that have been going on for years,”she said.”Reconciliation … takes a sustained effort. People have to become invested in their future.” Clinton, in her remarks, stressed that the U.S. government will remain committed to the peacemaking effort in Bosnia.”It is no time for the United States, either privately or publicly, to recede from our commitment to a united world,”she said.


Among the groups represented at the gathering were the National Council of Churches, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the International Rescue Committee, World Vision, Mercy International, the American Jewish Committee, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Physicians for Human Rights.

MJP END ANDERSON

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