Concern for Seven Hostages Told in Senate Prayer : Forgive Captors, Hijacked Priest Urges

A Roman Catholic priest who was a passenger on TWA Flight 847 when it was hijacked to Beirut last month opened the Senate session Monday with a prayer urging forgiveness for his captors and continued concern for seven Americans still held hostage by Muslim extremists in Lebanon.

Father William McDonnell, pastor of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church in the Chicago suburb of Algonquin, Ill., served as honorary Senate chaplain and gave the traditional prayer that begins each session. He was among the first group of passengers freed by the hijackers.

In his prayer, McDonnell urged God to embrace the soul of Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, killed by the hijackers in the early days of the ordeal, “who was asked to lay down his life for the sake of others and in the name of his country.”

After thanking God for helping the rest of the hostages eventually regain their freedom safely, McDonnell expressed “heartfelt concern for seven countrymen who still suffer the loss of these inalienable rights in unjust captivity.”

“If it be your will, please bring each of them home safe and soon,” he said. “Help us not to rest until that deed is done as best we can.”

McDonnell prayed for the hijackers also, calling them “another group of hostages.”

“These young men, and so many other people like them in other lands, are held captive by their own burning hatred, lasting grudges and sometimes centuries-old vendettas,” McDonnell said. “In some ways, they are the real hostages: inner hostages who are held in chains by their own violent life style, sentenced by their own choice to a lifetime of nursing bitterness and revenge.”