Religion: Words & Works

¶ In Denver, two Mennonite conscientious objectors completed, without apparent harmful effects, a six-week test of food that had been exposed to radiation, prepared to join other conscientious objectors in testing foods that have been subjected to greater radiation doses.

¶ In Durban, the Reconstituted Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa charged that Prime Minister J. G. Strydom “is doing everything in his power to enlist the aid of the Dutch Reformed Church to achieve a totalitarian state in South Africa,” warned that South Africa is “being led toward a police state” by an Afrikaner brotherhood said to be backed by the major Dutch Reformed Churches.

¶ In Rio de Janeiro, the 36th International Eucharistic Congress opened before more than 250,000 Roman Catholic pilgrims from 30 nations. Twenty-one cardinals and 300 bishops are expected before the week’s end.

¶ In Brussels, some 500 delegates to the Assembly of World Brotherhood sat through five days of speeches without either a hint of dispute or a healthy round of applause. Few speakers succeeded in rising above the grimly mirthless atmosphere of the occasion. Belgium’s Foreign Affairs Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, famed as an extemporaneous orator, armed himself with a copy of an old speech, liberally quoted himself, explained that he couldn’t express his sentiments any better than he did five years ago.