Pax Christi urges civil disobedience if U.S. escalates war on Iraq - Nation

National Catholic Reporter, August 16, 2002 by Tom Kelly

The 2002 assembly marked the U.S. peace organization's 30th anniversary by recognizing six "faithful witnesses to the `Peace of Christ,'" as Pax Christi USA Ambassadors of Peace: Helen Casey, Jesuit Fr. John Dear, Ray LaPort, Colman McCarthy, Megan McKenna and Nancy Small.

The final plenary session ended with participants extending their hands in blessing over a family from Wall, N.J. Tom Mahedy, the husband and father, faces three months in federal prison for crossing the line into the former School of the Americas, now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, in Fort Benning, Ga. Mahedy was one of 43 nonviolent demonstrators who were arrested and sentenced for protesting the human rights abuses in Latin America carried out by graduates of the U.S.-run military training school.

"[Going to prison] is hard as a father," Mahedy told NCR, "but I've come to realize that while love begins at home, it has to flow forth into the world as well."

Tom Kelly is a freelance writer in Toledo, Ohio.