Human Rights Group of Our Lady of the Wayside at Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands, together with the Women's Campaign for Soviet Jewry based in Birmingham, have contributed to the release of Alexander Feldman, a Russian Jewish dissident who has been held in a labour camp for the last three years.
During his detention, Mr Feldman, a scientist in his thirties, has suffered from a liver disease and an eye complaint. He has been subject to periods of solitary confinement.
Fr Patrick O'Mahoney, parish priest of Our Lady of the Wayside, has been in frequent contact with the Feldman family ever since Mr Feldman was charged with "anti-Soviet activities" in 1974.
When Mr Feldman was freed he was given a visa for Israel. Fr O'Mahoney hopes that he will be able to visit Our Lady of the Wayside after his period of rehabilitation.
He is the second Soviet Jew who has been freed through pressure from Our Lady of the Wayside. The first, Professor Yuli Tartakovsky; a thermophysicist, is now working at Tel Aviv University.
The plight of Soviet Jews was high-lighted at a conference held last week by the National Conference for Soviet Jewry in the Westminster Cathedral Conference Centre.
More than 60 people from various religious bodies attend ed the meeting and listened to several speakers, including Dr Stephen Roth, the Director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs, Dr Roth said that the Churches must recognise the large part they could play in the defence of human rights. He feared that the Western Powers would not push their demands for the full implementation of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR. • Amnesty International has urged Christians iu Britain to pray for a restoration of human rights in Chile. In a statement issued last week Amnesty drew attention to the disappearance of more than 1,500 Chileans in the 3{ years since the military coup.
One of them is Daniel Palma, a highly respected 61-year-old ecologist who was arrested last August and has not been seen since.
On March 25 the Permanent Committee of the Episcopal Conference of Chile declared: "We believe that there will not exist full guarantees for the respect of human rights while the country has no constitution, old or new, ratified by popular suffrage."
Cardinal Silva Henriques was one of six Catholic bishops in Chile to sign the statement.
IN ONE of his strongest attacks on liberallied abortion, Pope Paul last week described it as an "abominable crime" and urged "unconditional respect for human life." He was speaking on the same day that 100,000 northern Italian Catholics gathered In Milan for the largest pro-life rally ever held in Italy.
In a speech to a group of Belgian doctors, the Pope said: "Once again we want to insist on unconditional respect for human life, from its very beginnings." He challenged "manipulated statistics", "hasty biological affirmations", and "alleged social and political necessities", which were cited by advocates of liberalised abortion.
"The Catholic Church has always viewed abortion as an abominable crime," he said. "Every Christian must draw inferences from this and must not let himself be blinded by alleged political and social necessities." Doctors, he said, must fight to "show the grave errors on which pro-abortion propaganda is based." He asked: "Who, better than you, can denounce the manipulated statistics, the hasty biological affirmations and the disastrous repercussions on the physiological and psychological level" raised in the abortion debate.
Resignation after attack on bishops
A week after describing the Chilean bishops as "gullible" in political matters, the Justice Minister, Renato Damilano, resigned after bitter controversy. He had told the Santiago daily, La Tercera, that he would not retract his statements that the bishops were "gullible, ill-minded and frustrated" partners of Marxists and cheap politicians, and added: "I am not resigning."
By that time the Chilean Bishops' Conference had sent a protest to General Augusto Pinochet, head of the military government, saying
such expressions do not change our conviction that we fulfil our pastoral. duties." A number of newspaper editorials questioned Damilano s prudence.
Taize man for China
Brother Roger of Taize is to visit China at the end of this year. He will leave on October 30 after a meeting in Vienna, and plans to live among the poor or Hong Kong before crossing into mainland China "to pray for reconciliation of all human beings of goodwill.