Diocese of Amarillo

Texas

In 1981 the bishop of Amarillo told workers assembling the neutron bomb to quit their jobs.

historicalmilitarypeople

In 1981, the bishop of Amarillo asked people to walk away from their paychecks. The neutron bomb was being assembled at a plant in Pantex, out on the Panhandle plains. Bishop Leroy Matthiesen called on the workers there to resign in protest. Not one of them was reported to have done it. Matthiesen had been named bishop only the year before, by Pope John Paul the Second, and he came from Amarillo himself. The diocese he ran covered a huge stretch of northern Texas. Two years after the Pantex appeal, the Vatican carved twenty-three counties off the southern end of it to create a new diocese at Lubbock. Matthiesen stayed on until 1997. The plant kept working.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
In 1981, in protest of the assembly of the neutron bomb at a facility in Pantex, Matthiesen called for workers there to resign their jobs in protest. None were reported to have obeyed his call.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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