c. 2000 Religion News Service
House Forgives Debt in Foreign Aid Package
(RNS) In a 239-185 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a $13.8 billion foreign aid bill Thursday (July 13) that sets aside $225 million to alleviate or forgive the debts of 40 heavily indebted poor countries.
“This is a real shot in the arm for the debt relief campaign,” said Dan Driscoll-Shaw, national coordinator for Jubilee 2000 USA. Jubilee 2000 is an international coalition of religious groups and activists campaigning for global forgiveness of debt owed by the world’s poorest countries. “It shows that lawmakers in the House are truly hearing the call of the poor and are ready to lead efforts to help.”
Though the measure more than doubled the original $82 million Republicans wanted to set aside for debt relief, it still falls short of the $472 million the Clinton administration had requested to honor the nation’s commitment for the years 2000 and 2001 to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative _ an agreement made last year among wealthy countries to provide debt relief for poor nations such as Nicaragua and Tanzania.
Last year Congress failed to set aside any money to cover the United States’ obligation to the debt initiative in the year 2000. Republicans claimed they were hampered by spending limits.
“I wish we had more, but we don’t have more,” said Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Ala., who heads the House subcommittee that appropriates foreign aid. “This is the best we can do. I think the distributions we have made are fair and equitable.”
Thursday’s vote was “an enormously encouraging step,” said President Clinton, but because the bill did not provide enough money for debt relief it “should not become law.”
“I urge Congress to pass the full amount that I have requested for debt relief this year,” Clinton said in a statement. “As it stands, this bill still falls far short of what is necessary to fully implement this initiative.”
A Senate version of the bill approved last month allots just $75 million for debt repeal.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Foreign Ministry announced Friday (July 14) the nation will cancel $6 billion in debt owed by 62 developing countries, the Associated Press reported. On Thursday (July 13), Germany said it would cancel about $25 million of debt which Madagascar owes to the nation.
National Catholic Reporter Appoints Two Editors
(RNS) The National Catholic Reporter has named award-winning journalists Tom Roberts and Pam Schaeffer as editor and managing editor, respectively, of the independent newsweekly.
Ending a two-year stint as the newsweekly’s managing editor, Roberts first wrote for NCR in 1981 as a free-lance writer. Roberts served as news editor at the Religious News Service (now the Religion News Service) from 1984 until 1991, and as editor-at-large from 1991 until 1994. He also spent 12 years as a reporter and editorial page editor at the former Globe-Times of Bethlehem, Pa., where he won two national awards for investigative and environmental reporting.
Schaeffer joined NCR in 1995, most recently serving as special projects editor. A three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee, Schaeffer worked for 13 years as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before becoming news editor of the Religious New Service in the 1990s. Schaeffer also earned a doctoral degree in historical theology from St. Louis University.
Alvare Leaving Bishops Conference for Law Professor Post
(RNS) After 10 years of helping to lead the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to legal abortion, Helen Alvare is leaving her post as chief spokeswoman for the Pro-Life Secretariat of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops to accept a teaching position at The Catholic University of America.
“I have wanted to be a professor since I was a kid,” Alvare, 39, one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent spokespersons on abortion, told RNS in an interview. “I’m addicted to school, everything from my nose in a book to the smell of a library to the rhythm of a school year.”
Alvare’s last day at the NCCB is July 21. In the fall, she will become a tenure track associate professor of law at Catholic University, where she will start out teaching beginning property law. She plans later to focus on family policy and legislation.
The mother of a 6-year-old daughter and sons ages 3 and 1, Alvare holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Villanova University, a law degree from Cornell University and a master’s degree in systematic theology from Catholic University, where she also spent two years working on a doctorate before joining the NCCB.
“I want to get into family policy in a broader way,” said Alvare, who also is planning to write a book on Christian feminism. “Since I’ve been involved with abortion, I have seen so clearly how it is a product of deep family issues and other related problems. I want to talk about women and Christian feminism and the family and finally public policy and how they all function together.”
Alvare said her career move is important for the bishops’ conference, which she believes always needs a young woman as its most visible spokesperson on abortion and family issues. “A young female voice speaking in this area, because that’s who their chief, grass-roots advocates are. I’ve been traveling for 10 years to colleges, university, law schools and the young Catholic women are in a real transition (about supporting abortion).
“I want them to get a younger woman in here before I’m no longer in that category,” Alvare joked.
Mandela Receives Methodist Peace Award
(RNS) Former South African president Nelson Mandela has been awarded the 2000 World Methodist Peace Award.
“His single-minded commitment to peace not only gave South Africa a chance to start its life as a free country on a sound and democratic basis, but he gave hope to millions in Africa that this continent ravaged by political warmongering could become characterized by peace, freedom and stable governance,” said Bishop Mvume Dandala, presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of South Africa, according to Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
Mandela, who served nearly 30 years in prison for his efforts to end white-supremacist rule in South Africa before being released in 1990, became president of South Africa in 1994 in the country’s first democratic elections. He retired from politics last year.
Mandela will be presented with the Peace Award _ a medallion, a citation and $1,000 _ on Sept. 21 in Cape Town, South Africa. Previous award recipients include U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Egyptian Prime Minister Anwar Sadat and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Swaziland Parliament Considers Mandatory Sterilization Law
(RNS) The parliament of Swaziland next week will debate legislation that would require people infected with HIV/AIDS to get sterilized.
“We are directing the ministry of health and social welfare to introduce legislation as a matter of urgency to make it mandatory that all local residents found to be suffering from HIV/AIDS be sterilized,” parliament member Sikakadza Matsebula told Reuters news agency.
But a spokesman for the country’s health ministry said parliament was wrong to believe mandatory sterilization would stop the virus from spreading.
“With sterilization, the virus still remains in the blood,” he said.
About 25 percent of Swaziland’s 1 million people are infected with the HIV virus. AIDS could cut life expectancy rates in Swaziland from 38 years to 30 years, health experts say.
`The Insider,’ `The West Wing’ Take Top Humanitas Awards
(RNS) Buena Vista Pictures’ tobacco/journalism movie “The Insider” and the NBC White House drama “The West Wing” won the top honors at this year’s Humanitas Prize awards for film and TV writers.
The feature film award capped off the July 12 awards luncheon at the Universal City (Calif.) Hilton. The luncheon honored writers and writing teams whose work in eight TV and film categories tries to reflect the best in human values. From a combined 439 entries, the eight categories each had three finalists and the winners received prize checks ranging from $10,000 to $25,000.
Tony Award-winning actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein won the children’s animation award for penning “The Sissy Duckling” episode of the HBO children’s show “Happily Ever After.”
“We did the first-ever children’s special for gay children, because we’re born that way. I had no images to grow up with,” said Fierstein, who also wrote the play “Torch Song Trilogy,” a seminal work in gay American culture. His “Sissy Duckling” script was about a duck who is picked on by the other ducks because he is different. “We’re not all born sissies. I was lucky enough!” he said.
For the one-hour TV drama award, writers Aaron Sorkin, Lawrence O’Donnell Jr. and Paul Redford won for their anti-death penalty episode of “The West Wing.”
Though a nondenominational honor, Humanitas has been spearheaded since it began 26 years ago by Father Ellwood “Bud” Kieser, the Roman Catholic priest who heads Paulist Pictures.
Kieser said the award judges “didn’t have to search as hard this year” for quality work. But, the priest added, “There still is a lot of junk on American TV and in motion pictures.”
For the 90-minute-or-longer TV category, Tom Rickman won for his ABC telefilm adaptation of the best seller “Tuesdays With Morrie.” For 90-minute dramas on either PBS or cable, the prize went to Ann Peacock for her adapted screenplay for the HBO drama “A Lesson Before Dying.”
The new Humanitas/Sundance Institute award for independent film went to Gina Prince-Bythewood for writing the New Line Cinema sports movie “Love and Basketball.”
Quote of the Day: The Rev. Charles Hough, Episcopal priest in Fort Worth, Texas
(RNS) “The only way I’m going to leave this church is if I’m thrown out.”
_ The Rev. Charles Hough, an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, responding to a resolution passed at the Episcopal Church’s General Convention reprimanding his diocese for not ordaining women. Hough said he would not leave the church over the issue.
DEA END RNS
