Servite Priests Offer Special Mass for Beirut Hostage

The priests of the Servite Order in Fullerton joined their communities throughout the world Wednesday night in offering a Mass for Father Lawrence Jenco, who was captured in Beirut exactly one year ago.

Wearing the traditional black robes of the Servite Order, 25 brothers marched into St. Philip Benizi Catholic Church, which was dark except for the glow of candles at the altar. Masses were also celebrated by Servite orders in Europe, Mexico, Canada, Australia and South America, and also in New York, Denver and Jenco’s hometown of Joliet, Ill.

About 150 people gathered at the Fullerton church, including Eric Jacobsen, the son of hostage David P. Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, to pray for the release of the six American hostages captured in Beirut. Members of the group Islamic Jihad have claimed they will hold the hostages until political prisoners in Kuwaiti jails are released.

“During the past year, we have experienced great hope and anguish, moments when we thought that release was imminent,” Father Peregrine Graffius said during the Mass. “We are caught in a holding pattern between hope and despair. There is frustration because of seeming impossibility to make headway. We are innocent victims of a difficult world.”

Jenco, 51, a Servite priest and head of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon, was abducted on his way to work.

Father Bruce Klikunas said Jenco, known to the Fullerton order as “Marty,” had spent a year with them in the late 1970s, and that during that year he had worked with the United Farm Workers.

Meeting With Reagan

After the Mass, Eric Jacobsen, whose father was director at the American University Hospital in West Beirut when he was kidnaped May 28, said, “This anniversary accentuates the fact that it isn’t a crisis of days or weeks or even months.”

Jacobsen said the families of the hostages will meet again with President Reagan Jan. 20.

In Joliet, friends and family members gathered for a special Mass at the church where Jenco had served as an altar boy. Among the speakers was the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a former hostage in Beirut. Weir, a Presbyterian missionary, was released in September after four months in captivity.

The other hostages are Peter Kilburn, the librarian at American University, kidnaped on Dec. 3, 1984;Terry Anderson, Beirut bureau chief for the Associated Press, abducted on March 16, 1985, and Thomas Sutherland, dean of American University School of Agriculture, kidnaped June 9, 1985.

Another hostage, journalist Jeremy Levin, was kidnaped March 7, 1984, and escaped, resurfacing on Feb, 14, 1985. William Buckley, a U.S. diplomat who was abducted on March 16, 1984, was reportedly killed by his captors Oct. 4, 1985.

The Jacobsen family received a letter from David Jacobsen dated last Nov. 8 that stated he was being held in a room with Jenco, Anderson and Sutherland. In it, he criticized the Reagan Administration for not negotiating with his captors.

Jacobsen wrote, “The release of the four of us is within the power of President Reagan and can be accomplished immediately. Our captors want to talk, but my government apparently refuses.”