MR CIARAN McKEOWN, leader of the Northern Ireland Peace People, was among those elected to an international peace team by delegates at a consultation on non-violence held in Londonderry last week.
Inspired by Dom Helder Camara, of Brazil, and hosted by Bishop Edward Daly, of Derry, the consultation was designed to improve communications between peace workers and bring out the practical implications of nonviolence.
The newly elected "peace team" will now study the possibility of setting up a Peace Press Agency and will prepare for a world-wide peace conference, to be held in 1979 possibly in Galilee or India.
Ironically, one of the delegates elected to the team, Senor Adolfo Perez Esquivel,
BCC call to continue S Africa arms embargo
The British Council of Churches, at its spring assembly last week, passed a resolution calling on the Government to maintain and improve the effectiveness of its presents arms embargo on South Africa.
Proposing the resolution, Mr Sydney Bailey, deputy chairman of the BCC's division of international affairs, said the Churches' decision to reject support for violent solutions to the South Africa problem imposed a heavy responsibility on them to press for sufficient alternative measures.
Cardinal warns clergy against politics Cardinal Casariego, Archbishop of Guatemala, in a letter to his clergy, has called upon them to avoid involvement in the forthcoming election. The letter, dated March 19, was marked "Confidential to the Clergy", but a copy has been sent to the Spanish magazine Vida Nueva.
While calling on all citizens to exercise their right to vote, the Cardinal warned his priests against being deceived "by the dream of leadership and social actions which can only end, sooner or later, in the saddest spiritual and material bankruptcy." was prevented from attending the consultation because he has been imprisoned by the Argentine Government for his work for human rights.
Other members of the team include Bishop Thomas Gumbelton, ,Auxiliary of Detroit; the Rev Elias Chacour, who works with the Arab community in Israel, and Miss Ljilijana Matkovic-Vlasic a Yugoslavian journalist.
The 45 delegates from 20 countries had the chance to meet some of the local people at a Mass in Derry's oldest Catholic church in the heart of the Bogside district.
At the -Mass, concelebrated with some 30 priests from the Derry diocese, Dom Helder Camara appealed to the people of Ireland to continue their great work of sending missionaries to the Third World.
"Ireland, you are a nation of great faith. Continue to help spread that Faith throughout the world," he said. "We are all brothers who are united with Christ in the struggle for justice. Let us pursue that struggle together non-violently."