Rep. Robert F. Drinan (D. Mass.) said yesterday that Pope John Paul II has received his letter requesting Papal intervention on behalf of imprisoned Soviet Jewish activist Anatoly Shcharansky Drinan who is a Roman Catholic priest, Wrote to the Pope on Nov. 12. His letter was conveyed by Robert F. Wagner, President Carter’s personal envoy to the Vatican.
Drinan disclosed that he had received a letter form Wagner in which the envoy stated One of my first official actions following presentation of my letter of credence as the personal envoy of the President to the Vatican was to transmit your letter to His Holiness. “Wagner said he considered that act” very appropriate be cause the promotion of Human rights is at the core of my consultations with His Holiness and the Vatican.
Drinan’s letter to the Pope characterized Shcharansky’s trial on treason charges last year as “a mockery of justice and merely the most prominence event in a long and continuing series of attempts to harass and intimidate Mrs. Shcharansky and other Soviet Jews and human rights advocates” in the USSR. Drinan said yesterday that “intervention by the Pope on behalf of Anatoly Shcharansky would be a convincing demonstration of the Vatican’s overriding moral concern for the dignity and freedom of the individual.”
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