Catholic youth aid Guatemalan battle against poverty

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT THE SUSPENSION of two Maryknoll priests in Guatemala, Fr. Thomas Melville and his brother, Fr, Arthur Melville, who are said to have become involved with Left-wing guerrillas, highlights a disturbing and distressing situation in that
country.
Much of the unrest is due to the absence of any major effort for social and economic reform Fr. Isidro Triarte, S.J., a professor of the Catholic Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala City, who has over 2,000 students, said last week that several students implicated in aiding Leftist groups "drifted into violent tactics after being fired by a desire for social justice."
INFILTRATION It was the comfort and aid lent to militant Leftist groups that apparently led to the suspensions of the Melville brothers. According to reliable observers Communist agents are busy infiltrating some of these groups, gaining positions of influence along with the social-minded militant Christians.
The Maryknoll affair and the fact that Catholic students are making contact with guerrilla groups, mostly to give them medicine and food, poses a serious problem for the Church authorities in Guatemala.
On the one hand they have stated that they respect and support constitutional authority, but on the other they must, and do, continue preaching the social doctrine of the Church. Pope Paul's encyclical, "The Development of Peoples," has made a deep impact on the thinking of the country.
Meanwhile, the Melville brothers are now known to be in Mexico where they went following their suspension. Fr. Jam McCormack, M.M. head of the Maryknoll Fathers, says that their suspension will be lifted if they return to Ossining, New York, the order's headquarters, to discuss their case.
It has also become known that a third Maryknoll father, Fr. Blase Bonpane, was ordered back to Ossining from Guatemala with the two brothers. While they went to Mexico, he in fact returned to Ossining, and has since been reassigned to a post in Hawaii.