By Michael Motes

With the theme “Heaven Help Them If You Don’t,” representatives from through the southeast met at the Sheraton Biltmore Hotel in Atlanta February 7 for a day-long planning session of the 1974 American Overseas Aid Fund Appeal, a program under the sponsorship of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC).

The annual appeal, providing funding for Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Papal Charities, the Catholic Seaman’s Institute and the Office of Migration of the USCC, U.S. churches is on Laetare Sunday, March 24.

Addressing a luncheon session during the meeting Father Philip McNamara made a special appeal for support of the CRS division of the USCC, emphasizing the work currently being done with Cambodian refugees.

Father McNamara, CRS program director, stated that nearly 40,000 people a month are benefiting from the more than $1.5 million the USCC division has sent to the war-torn country since May.

Since April 1973, when Father McNamara left for Cambodia to coordinate the newly-established CRS relief and resettlement program there, an estimated 300,000 Cambodian refugees have received food, clothing, blankets and medical aid from CRS.

Nine mobile “soup kitchens” in the Phnom Penh area are currently providing a hot meal each day to approximately 20,000 school-age children.

Prior to his assignment in Cambodia Father McNamara had worked with refugees through CRS in South Vietnam from March 1968 to November 1969. At the time of his most recent CRS appointment, he was pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Clinton, Massachusetts, and had served for many years in an administrative capacity with the Catholic Charities of the Worcester diocese.

When an American B-52 bomber mistakenly attacked the Neak Luong Hospital in Cambodia last August Father McNamara, through CRS, arranged for an emergency supply of medical equipment and materials to furnish the rebuilding of the institution.

He recently completed planning for the immediate construction by CRS of a new 60-bed provisional hospital in Konpongapeau that is expected to serve an estimated 14,000 people.

Although the main emphasis of the CRS-Cambodia program is directed toward immediate emergency relief and resettlement, long-range rehabilitation and development projects are also being initiated by Father McNamara’s staff.

One such project is the recently opened Widows’ Village at Stung Kambot East, just outside Phnom Penh. Opened by CRS to accommodate 105 families, each family has been supplied with a simple but strong house and with enough seeds, fertilizers, insecticides and tools for vegetable cultivations of the small plot allotted them.

The income from the sale of rice grown on this land, plus the additional income from the excess production of each vegetable garden will guarantee the residents of the Widows’ Village an adequate income for years to come.

Among the many memories of Cambodia Father McNamara shared with his audience was the story of a Buddhist monk who approached him in that country where the small minority of Catholics is vastly outnumbered by these of the Buddhist religion.

“There has never been an emergency without the Catholic Relief Services being there to help,” the monk told the Catholic priest.

“We are not in Cambodia to convert, but to help,” said Father McNamara.

Archbishop Thomas Donnellan spoke briefly following Father McNamara’s keynote address and offered a similar thought: “Our responsibility toward our people is to make clear to them their responsibility toward the Church and all the people of God, not only in this country and not only in Cambodia, but throughout the world,” he said.

In addition to Archbishop Donnellan, the Archdiocese of Atlanta was represented at the meeting by Father Robert Kinast of the Office of Religious Education; Sister Madeline Roddenbery, Superintendent of Schools; Father Raphael McDonald, director of the archdiocesan resettlement division; Ruth Maguire, president of the archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women, and Father Vicnent Mulvin, who is acting director of this year’s Laetare Sunday collection.