ADDENDA

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 19, 2001

THE COLD FRONT that blanketed the Northeast with snow sent a frigid blast of winter to central Florida pickers scrambling for work in local orange groves. The freezing temperatures in early January will drastically shorten the citrus picking season. Farmworkers worked around the clock through the holidays to pick oranges before the freezing temperatures spoiled the fruit. The shorter orange season could wreak havoc for pickers, who need 13 weeks of interrupted work to qualify for state unemployment. Only a state of disaster declared by Gov. Jeb Bush would bring relief to workers.

ARCHBISHOP EDWARD M. EGAN of New York said at a prayer service for immigrants that the experience of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as exiles in Egypt almost made immigration "a kind of sacrament." Egan delivered the homily at St. Patrick's Cathedral for a service Jan. 8 focusing attention on the needs of immigrants and concluding observance of National Migration Week. He was joined in leading the service by Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn, who introduced a series of prayer offered in English, Creole, Chinese, Italian, Polish and Spanish.

AS OF JULY 1, the U.S. bishops' two national conferences will be combined, reorganized and given a new name: the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The name change comes when new statutes reorganizing the bishops' national structures take effect. The bishops have been working at the reorganization of the conferences -- currently, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and U.S. Catholic Conference -- for nearly a decade and received word in January that the Vatican has approved the new statutes, which were the last necessary element of the reorganization.

THE PRESIDENT of Belarus told Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek of Minsk-Mohilev that he would like the church to stop using foreign priests, said a presidential spokesman. President Alexander Lukashenko made the remarks during a closed-door meeting with Swiatek, said Dmitry Zhuk, head of the presidential press service. Zhuk declined to elaborate Jan. 4 on what else was discussed during the Dec. 24 meeting. Itar-TASS, the Russian government-run wire service that initially reported the meeting, quoted Lukashenko as saying that 149 of the country's 261 Catholic priests are foreigners, mostly from neighboring Poland.

SOUTH KOREA'S bishops sent a petition with 1.2 million signatures urging the National Assembly to abolish a law that allows abortion. "Abortion is murder against God's law and natural law, which are the sources of all laws," the country's 20 bishops and diocesan heads said in the petition. Auxiliary Bishop Peter Kang Woo-il of Seoul presented the petition with 1.2 million signatures of both Catholics and non-Catholics to National Assembly Chairman Lee Man-sop Dec. 27. The signature campaign began last March.

AT THE REQUEST of Pope John Paul II, the Vatican plans use funds left over from Holy Year celebrations to build a facility for disabled pilgrims in Rome. Officials of the Vatican's Central Committee for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 said they expected their accounts to close in the black, leaving enough of a surplus for a major project. "Everything saved in the committee accounts will be destined to a project for the disabled here in Rome," said Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, secretary of the committee. "Not one lira will remain in the Vatican cash boxes."