Sent by Howdy Burns
The 1988 delegation was the first official delegation to Central America from the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore. Casa Baltimore cooperated with that delegation by coordinating the visit of the Archdiocesan delegation to Nicaragua and Limay.
In contrast, the January 1986 group was the first delegation organized by Casa Baltimore of St. Johns UMC at 27th & St. Paul Sts in Balt City. It is important that you realize that St. Johns was the center of most Central American peace efforts in Baltimore City at that time. As I was very deeply involved in most of those efforts, I was also involved in the formation of Casa Baltimore at St. John’s, and thus became an integral part of its first delegation.
But I was also working hard within my own parish — St. V’s — to establish a parish to parish connection between St. V’s and San Juan de Limay Parish.
NOTE WELL that St. V’s, including me, Dan Gage, Chuck Frascati, Barbara Vanden Bosche, Anne George, Kay Donahoe, and others, had chosen San Juan de Limay completely independantly of Nan & Phil and St. John’s efforts that led them to make the same choice.
So, when I went with Casa Baltimore’s first delegation, I had a separate mission to establish contact between St. Vincent’s and the parish of San Juan de Limay. To do do, Dick and our Peace Committee thought it best that we establish official communications between St. Vincent’s and the local, presiding Bishop. And so I did, I think with the help of Paul Fitzpatrick, a priest who I met as part of the Casa Baltimore delegation.
Anyway, in 1988 a lot of the delegates’ notes were typed up because we wanted to submit a formal report to the Archdiocese. Whereas the only notes of mine from the 1986 delegation that were transcribed were those of the meeting with the Bishop so that I could submit them for the review of the Parish Counsel.