Now for the—

WHEELCHAIR OLYMPICS
`C.H.' REPORTER
ANOTHER Olympics opens in Rome on Sunday. This time, incredible as it may seem, all the athletes—over 400, from 24 countries—will be in wheel-chairs. And among them, representing Ireland, will be a priest, one of a team of five Catholic patients from the Rehabilitation Institute in Dublin.
The team is flying to Rome today (Friday) to compete in such exacting sports as javelin and club throwing, fencing, archery, weight-lifting — even swimming and a specially devised form of hockey.
Says the manager of the Rehabilitation Institute in Dublin, Mr. F. Cahill: "The medical profession here are tickled pink at seeing patients who were previously cripples and written off as just a liability, travelling such a distance and representing their country in these Parolympics. It is a revelation to all. We are entered in practically all the contests.
"While we might not be as highly trained or as well sponsored as our British or American friends, we have the consolation of knowing that the sending of this team to Rome is going to have a tremendous psychological effect on the disabled in Ireland. It will be a great encouragement, a great example, to everyone."
Included in the Irish team (their ages range from 24-40) is a married woman. A football match in Dublin raised £100 towards the £500 costs of the Rome trip. On the way home the team is to visit Lourdes, and the priest in the party will say Mass at the Grotto.
The cost of sending a team from Britain to Rome is over £3,000, for there are over 50 paraplegics (people partly paralysed) in this team. It will be the largest contingent entered for the Games. Leading it is Dr. L. Guttman, director of the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville, near Aylesbury, Bucks.
Dr. Guttman introduced sports as part of his world-renowned rehabilitation programme in 1944. He organised the first big games in the grounds of Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1948, with 26 contestants. Now he organises two games every year: a British meeting and an international event. Hundreds compete, among them many Catholics.
PAPAL GIFT FOR SHRINE
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The Pope sent the necklace, which hair oeen presented to hurt by Presiaent airoratizi, at Argentina, as a gut of his country's Catholics, to Cardinat Montini, Archbishop of Milan, and asked him to take it to the shrine where the Pope and his family prayed together more than 70 years ago.
In a letter to the Cardinal accompanying the necklace, the Pope wrote: All the shrines of Our Lady are dear to me. I have visited so many; the one at Lourdes at least 10 times.
"1 remember with special affection the shrine of Our Lady of the Woods because she was the smile of my childhood, the custodian and the encouragement of my priestly vocation."
Pope John visited the shrine in 1954 when as Cardinal Roncalli he crowned the image of Our Lady of the Woods and then again two months before his election to the Papacy.
In Rome, through the co-operation of the International Olympics Committee and Italian authorities, the wheel-chair competitors are being accommodated in the Olympic village, and they are using the Olympic Stadia for their contests.
An incredible fact illustrated: Confinement to a wheel-chair does not mean exclusion from sporting activities. Disabled men and women in the Rome Wheel-Chair Olympics will be competing in such diverse events as javelin throwing (above), fencing, and a specially devised form of hockey.