Page 5, 20th December 1957
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`SCRAP OF PAPER' ACCUSATION
CEYLON'S Health Minister has treated an agreement as a " scrap of paper", said Bishop Regno, 0.S.B., of Muscly. He accused the government of breach of contract in refusing to admit four American nursing sisters as government hospital staff nurses.
The Bishop coupled this criticism with a general attack on the treatment of Catholics in Ceylon. The days of " dignified silence " were over, he said; Catholics should now bestir themselves to defehd their rights against " usurpation."
The Bishop was speaking to a Catholic Association meeting in Kandy, after the departure from Ceylon of four American Maryknoll sisters who had arrived a year ago to serve as nurses in the Kandy hospital.
They had to leave because of the refusal of the Health Ministry to sanction their continued stay in the country. It was reported that a 1949 contract with the Ministry provided for an annual intake of four nuns until a limit of 32 was reached.
THE QUOTA
"The government has broken the contract legally entered into with us regarding the Maryknoll nuns," said Bishop Regno, " We had to keep to our terms of the contract by getting down the yearly quota to four nuns, but the Minister of Health has treated the agreement as a scrap of paper and refused to appoint the four nuns after their one year of study of the Sinhalese language."
The Sisters were the victims of a " sustained campaign of calumny and vilification," and they had been painted as criminals in certain scurrilous newspapers, stated the Bishop.
The Health Minister, Mrs. Vimala Wijewradcne, seemed by her own action to have endorsed such abusive statements, he added. " So much for the canons of elementary decency, justice, and moral scruples."
Referring to the general situation of Catholic religious freedom, Bishop Regno said that everything that Catholics held sacred had been treated with scorn and contempt in Ceylon. He appealed to Catholics to protest against this indignity.
" We must from now onwards band ourselves together to raise our voice of protest at any indignity that may be hurled at our faith or anything connected with it," he said.
" Wri must bestir ourselves and be ready to fight using every constitutional means against any usurpation of our just rights as citizens of a democratic country, of which we have always been loyal citizens and to the progress of which we have contributed our share."
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