Organ donation highlighted in November
LOS ANGELES --- Houses of worship throughout the Southland will focus attention on the need for organ and tissue donation during the ninth annual National Donor Sabbath the weekend of Nov. 12-14, shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday.

"This year as we give thanks, we also ask Southern Californians to give life by affirming their wish to be organ and tissue donors," said Tom Mone, chief executive officer of OneLegacy, the federally designated transplant donor network for Southern California. "Family understanding is crucial to ensure that those who want to donate can do so --- and save lives in the process."

There are now more than 7,500 people waiting for life-saving organs in Southern California alone. Of the more than 86,000 people on that national organ transplant waiting list, 17 people die each day before an organ can be found. Hundreds of thousands more require donated tissues to prevent or cure blindness, heal burns or prevent amputation.

Every major organized western and eastern religion supports donation as a generous act that benefits both those in need and the individual and family who gives. During National Donor Sabbath churches can invite speakers to share their experiences as donor family members or transplant recipients or pass out literature and donor cards to parishioners.

"Clergy of all denominations are touched by donation as they counsel those who are waiting, celebrate renewed life with transplant recipients or help families with the decision to donate," said Tenaya Wallace of OneLegacy.

For more information about National Donor Sabbath observances, contact Wallace at (213) 401-1011 or see www.donatelife.net/thanksgivingday.

Rally to protest proposed King/Drew
closures scheduled Nov. 15
WATTS --- A local coalition formed to stop proposed closures at Martin Luther King/Charles Drew Medical Center in Watts will hold a community rally on Nov. 15 from 3-6 p.m. in front of the King/Drew Magnet School located at 1601 E. 120th St. in Los Angeles.

The rally is being organized by The Neighborhood Coalition to Save King/Drew Trauma Center. In addition to the rally, the Coalition meets every Saturday at the Watts Labor Community Action Center at 108th St. and Central Ave. in Watts. The weekly meetings are chaired by Congresswoman Maxine Waters who has criticized the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors' plan to shut the King/Drew trauma center.

For more information go to www.savekingdrew.com or contact the group at (323) 583-5908.

Brooklyn school closings to come after
'monumental' enrollment slide
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CNS) --- The top education official of the Brooklyn Diocese said some Catholic elementary schools in the diocese will have to close next year after successive enrollment drops of nearly 4,000 and 3,000 over the past two years. "This is a problem of monumental proportions," said Msgr. Michael J. Hardiman, diocesan vicar for education. According to statistics he released in late October, the 2004-05 enrollment in pre-kindergarten to eighth grade in the 147 schools in the diocese is 44,753. The enrollment loss of nearly 7,000 in two years represents nearly one out of every seven students. "I can say, sadly but with certainty, that we will not have 147 elementary schools in Brooklyn and Queens this time next year," Msgr. Hardiman said, referring to the two New York boroughs that form the diocese.

Nuncio urges renewed efforts on 'road map'
to peace in Middle East
UNITED NATIONS (CNS) --- Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Vatican nuncio to the United Nations, called Nov. 1 for the international community to renew efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians to follow the "road map" to peace. "The reluctance of the international community to challenge the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to negotiate in good faith has contributed to the fact that the road map has not taken off," he said at U.N. headquarters in New York. The road map was the plan designed to produce the two-state solution proposed by President George W. Bush in a 2002 speech to the United Nations. This approach, with a timetable laying out parallel steps the two sides should take, was endorsed by a "quartet" composed of the United States, the Russian Federation, the European Union and the United Nations. A Vatican statement delivered at the United Nations last year endorsed the road map and its call for a two-state solution. But this year, Archbishop Migliore noted that the plan had not brought peace, and instead the situation remains one of "ongoing violence, economic depression, restrictions on movement and lack of access to religious sites."

Crypt church vigil marks full circle for
cardinal's life of service
WASHINGTON (CNS) --- Nearly six decades earlier, the quiet, scholarly seminarian from Michigan had been ordained a deacon in the crypt church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, beginning a life of service to the church that would lead him to the nation's capital in 1980 as an archbishop and then a cardinal. On Oct. 29, the casket of Cardinal James A. Hickey, retired archbishop of Washington, lay in state before that same altar in the crypt church, as mourners prayed before it throughout the day. Then 20 bishops and cardinals, nearly 100 priests and a crowd of 700 other people that included deacons, seminarians, religious and lay people of all ages and from different ethnic and racial backgrounds gathered for a vigil Mass to honor the cardinal at the place where his life as an ordained clergyman had begun.