Peace group recognized> Plowshares to get award

Pax Christi Maine is presenting its Oscar Romero Award for Nonviolent Witness to Peace and Justice in Service of the Poor to the Plowshares — the 50 or so groups that have engaged in symbolic actions that aim to turn American weapons into plowshares.

The award will be made at a dinner at the Guild Hall, Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Portland, on the eve of the sentencing of six people who entered Bath Iron Works on Feb. 12 and vandalized a U.S. Navy destroyer.

Convicted in May, the six may be sentenced the second week of August.

The six, including peace activist Philip Berrigan, are members of Prince of Peace Plowshares. They face up to 15 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000 for destroying government property and a companion count of conspiracy.

Berrigan’s brother, Daniel Berrigan, and Jacqueline Allen-Doucot, who participated in other Plowshares actions, will receive the award for the Plowshares and speak.

The award is named in honor of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, a critic of the military establishment in El Salvador, who was assassinated while offering Mass in March 1980.

“The hundreds of years the Plowshares have spent in jail to move our consciences toward disarmament and as penance for our nation’s military violence and diversion of resources from the poor to immoral nuclear weapons are an unparalleled nonviolent witness in our national history,” Pax Christi Maine coordinator William H. Slavick said in announcing the award.

Previous Romero Award recipients include the Rev. William Callahan, co-director of Quest for Peace; leaders of five Maine groups serving the poor; Paolo Evarista Cardinal Arns of Sao Paolo, and Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

For more information, call 773-6562.