Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan was invited this week to give the invocation at the opening of the Southern Governors Conference.

The invitation came from Governor Jimmy Carter himself. The meeting, an annual affair, was held in Atlanta beginning November 8. It is attended by the chief executives of all states in the southern part of the country and is generally viewed as an important strategy session.

In his invocation, the archbishop prayed that "there be a renewed moral in this country that will knit us together in justice, honesty, and peace. Give our state leaders insight, wisdom, and vision like that which you gave to Solomon so that they can guide us with decisiveness through the challenges that are our dignity."

The opening session was held in the Phoenix Ballroom of the Regency Hyatt House Hotel. The meeting is part of a continuing effort to cooperate more on problems of common interest among the governors and the states they represent. The agenda for this meting was to include such widely diverse items as education, law enforcement, freight rates, and strategy projections for a stronger southern voice in the kind of president elected nationally.

In a letter to the archbishop, Governor Carter expressed his satisfaction that the archbishop could be on hand for the important opening session. Asking God to "stretch the horizons of their concern beyond the limits of their own districts so that they could discern what is good for all men," the archbishop concluded the invocation by saying "We have placed our trust in these men; they have placed their trust in You; let none of us be disappointed."