Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, testifying...

Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony, testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on behalf of the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, urged ratification of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms reduction treaty “without crippling amendment and without undue delay.”

Mahony quoted Pope John Paul II to the effect that the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty is “ ‘a point of departure rather than a point of arrival’ in the arms control process.”

He gave his testimony Monday as chairman of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Committee on International Policy.

Mahony said the treaty offers “unprecedented verification requirements” and amounts to a “modest step toward progressive disarmament.”

The bishops, as in their 1983 pastoral letter on the nuclear arms race, speak as teachers and pastors, he said, and with “deep respect for the technical complexity of the INF treaty in all its political and strategic dimensions.

“But . . . we also recognize that no question of foreign affairs surpasses the nuclear arms race in terms of moral content and importance.” Catholic teaching recognizes a nation’s right to legitimate defense within strict moral limits, but those limits have taken on a “qualitatively new character” in the Nuclear Age, he said.

HOLIDAY

Traditional Eastern Orthodox observances of the first Sunday of Lent will be held in three Southern California locations this Sunday at 7 p.m. Lent began Monday for Eastern Orthodox Christians and will culminate in Easter on April 10. The Southern California Council of Orthodox Clergy announced that the Sunday of Orthodoxy vesper services will be at St. Steven Serbian Cathedral in Alhambra, St. Luke Antiochian Orthodox Church in Garden Grove and St. Athanasius Antiochian Orthodox Church in Goleta. Services will include the traditional procession of icons.

DATES

Yolanda King, daughter of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who directs the cultural affairs program at the Atlanta center named for her father, will speak at Pepperdine University’s weekly convocation 10 a.m. Monday in connection with Black History Month.