
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 5, 1994                   TAG: 9403050018
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By Laurie Goodstein The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PROGRAM CALLS ON CHURCHES TO `ADOPT' ADDICTS

The Rev. George Clements, a Roman Catholic priest from Chicago, asked members of his congregation during Mass one day to stand if they abused drugs or alcohol or were close to someone who did.

All of the more than 500 parishioners stood, Clements said.

A veteran social activist, Clements this week announced the start of a national program to mobilize churches and other houses of worship across the country to each "adopt" one addict and help see that person through recovery.

The One Church-One Addict program will begin with pilot projects in Maryland and Illinois, although specific churches have not been chosen. In making the announcement, Clements was joined by Lee P. Brown, a Clinton Cabinet member and director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"Government cannot get this job done by itself," Brown said Tuesday before an ecumenical crowd of clergy and lay leaders at a news conference in the Old Executive Office Building.

An estimated 2.7 million Americans are "hard-core drug users," Brown said. The government needs to tap "the awesome power that our religious leaders have" in the United States, with 340,000 churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship - a combined 150 million members, Brown said.

In his previous positions as police commissioner in Atlanta; Portland, Ore.; and New York City, Brown said, he often visited churches and sought the involvement of the religious community.

Clements, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," is best known for his One Church-One Child campaign to find black adoptive parents for black and biracial chidren. He said the campaign was responsible for the adoptions of more than 40,000 children in 39 states. Clements adopted a boy named Joey, becoming one of the first Catholic priests to adopt a child.

Clements also fought to enact laws against the sale of drug paraphernalia in Chicago and 17 states. Drug addicts, he said, should be a natural concern for churches.

Serious drug abusers - and young addicts in particular - often are alienated from churches and religious people, said Anthony Cole, deputy executive director of Haymarket House, a drug treatment program in Chicago. "If the church will start actively trying to meet the needs of those people," Cole said, "they will start coming to church."

by CNB