The Nation - News from March 27, 1989

“I cry with you once more . . . we cannot seem to rouse our leaders to realize we are in a crisis,” declared Bishop Paul Moore Jr., 69, in his final Easter sermon before retiring as head of the Episcopal diocese of New York. Moore was criticizing insensitivity to the plight of the poor in his sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Moore, born to a wealthy family, has pursued an activist and liberal agenda as a clergyman, working with the poor, participating in the civil rights movement, leading a peace mission to Saigon in 1970 and traveling to Moscow in 1982 to promote nuclear disarmament. In 1977, he ordained a homosexual man as an Episcopal priest.