Religion: Words & Works

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¶ Francis Cardinal Spellman, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, and the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of Churches and stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., took to the air to bring Christmas good will to the armed forces. Cardinal Spellman laid the cornerstone of a new Catholic church in Tokyo and contributed $5,000 to help complete it before flying on to Korea for his fifth consecutive Christmas with the troops. Dr. Blake, traveling in the personal plane of Lieut. General Glenn O. Barcus of the Northeast Air Command, with the general himself at the controls, stopped at Labrador and Greenland en route to Thule (700 miles from the North Pole) to deliver Christmas Day sermons.

¶ Benedictine Brother Marinus, 41, of St. Paul's Abbey, Newton, N.J., received the Korean Order of Military Merit Ulchi with Gold Star from the Korean ambassador at a ceremony in Washington, and reminisced about how he won it. Five years ago, as Captain Leonard P. LaRue of the S.S. Meredith Victory, he was freighting supplies to Korea. "The once fine city of Hungnam was gasping in its death throes. Five unshaven Army colonels came aboard. 'Captain, we need your assistance,' one said. 'Thousands of men, women and children are here. We have to get them out. Will you help us?' That heart-rending plea needed no reply. It had been answered 20 centuries ago: 'Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.' We were credited with taking out 14,000 in a single lift."