Nation: We Wept Together

Prayers, tears and new fears as clergymen visit the hostages

They had all been readied for display. Their hair was neatly combed, and their clothes were freshly laundered. Though many of them had long been kept in silent isolation, with their hands tied, they now seemed in good physical condition. Several eagerly asked their American visitors which football teams were in the professional playoffs and college bowl games. They were prohibited from talking about politics, but one nonetheless inquired: "Is Teddy Kennedy running for President?" A few muttered defiant wisecracks about their captors, but others, particularly some of the younger ones, seemed under considerable strain. When the brief encounters were over, a few sobbed as they embraced the visitors and then headed back to the cubicles in which they have been held for eight weeks. All the while, thousands of young Iranians stood outside in the first snow of the season, chanting the familiar slogans: "Death to the Shah! Death to Carter!"

This was the scene last week at the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Christmas visit by four clergymen. The churchmen were French-born Léon-Etienne Cardinal Duval, Catholic Archbishop of Algiers, and three liberal American clerics: William Sloane Coffin Jr., senior minister of New York City's interdenominational Riverside Church; Thomas J. Gumbleton, Catholic auxiliary bishop of Detroit; and M. William Howard, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

The four men had been invited to Tehran, at their own expense, by Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council, which selected them from a list of names proposed by Foreign Ministry officials. Explained Council Member Mohammed Javad Bahonar: "Our experts gave priority to those known for their advocacy of anti-imperialist and humanitarian movements." Some of the names had been suggested to the Foreign Ministry by three Kansans who were in Tehran trying on their own to negotiate an end to the crisis. The Kansans were led by Norman Forer, a former antiwar activist who teaches social welfare at the University of Kansas; after 18 days in Tehran, the would-be mediators went home.

The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had presumably intended the clergymen's visit to answer mounting world fears about the hostages' treatment. But instead the result was a new controversy over the fact that some of the Americans were missing. The militants at the embassy insisted that for security reasons, no more than five hostages could meet with a clergyman at one time. After considerable argument, the clerics split up and conducted eleven separate services. Said Gumbleton: "We sang together, we prayed together and we shared the Eucharist together. I should also say that we wept together." Afterward, the churchmen tallied the number of hostages that each had seen and arrived at a total of 41 men and two women—seven short of the 50 hostages who the State Department insists were seized by the students on Nov. 4.