Peace Activist to Talk About Terror at Holy Cross

WORCESTER, Mass. – Peace activist G. Simon Harak, S.J. will give a talk titled "The War on Terror: Who Wins? Who Loses?" on March 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hogan Ballroom at the College of the Holy Cross.

Harak, who holds a Ph.D. from Notre Dame in ethics, entered the Society of Jesus in 1970, and has served as a missionary in Jamaica and the Philippines. He has been active in the peace movement, and helped found Voices in the Wilderness, a group designed to nonviolently challenge what they claim is the economic warfare being waged by the U.S. against the people of Iraq.

Harak has traveled to Iraq three times with Voices, where he openly and publicly violated U.S. and United Nations sanctions to bring medicine and toys to Iraqi hospitals. During one of his visits, he was the only American representative among 500 international participants at the Baghdad International Conference on the Sanctions (May 1-4, 1999), presenting two plenary papers, and a paper to the Committee on Humanitarian Effects of the Sanctions. In his visits to Iraq, he also spoke with many religious leaders, heads of human rights and relief organizations and UN representatives. He has made nearly 2,000 presentations on Iraq on TV, radio, and at different venues in the U.S. and abroad, as well as to a congress of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the United Nations. In 1998, he resigned his full professorship at Fairfield University, to work full time with Voices in the Wilderness against the sanctions.

Harak is the author of Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Character (Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2001).

The lecture is sponsored by Pax Christi Holy Cross, a religious organization which strives to create a world that reflects the Peace of Christ by exploring, articulating and witnessing to the call of Christian nonviolence. The work begins in personal life and extends to communities of reflection and action to transform structures of society.

Pax Christi Holy Cross is a local chapter of a national organization called Pax Christi USA, which is a division of Pax Christi International, the International Catholic Peace Movement. Pax Christi USA rejects war, preparations for war and every form of violence and domination. It advocates primacy of conscience, economic and social justice and respect for creation.