Middle East End of a Priest's Ordeal

By William E. Smith

The frail, white-bearded priest was exhausted from his long ordeal and looked far older than his 51 years. But Father Lawrence Martin Jenco managed to perform the necessary rituals with distinction last week as he made his way homeward after 564 days of captivity in Lebanon. His journey took him from Syria to West Germany, then Rome, London and Washington, and finally Chicago and suburban Joliet, Ill. "Chicago is a windy city, and I want to feel that wind again," he declared soon after his arrival at the big U.S. air base at Rhein-Main in Frankfurt, West Germany. At week's end, before heading home to Joliet, he met in the Oval Office with President Reagan, who told him that his release was "an answer to a great many prayers."

Scarcely six days earlier, Father Jenco had been freed in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley by Islamic Jihad, the shadowy terrorist organization that had kidnaped him in Beirut in January 1985. Now, suffering from heart disease and near exhaustion, he was eager to go home. But first, as he emphasized again and again throughout a week of almost unbearable excitement and emotion, he had some urgent promises to keep.

Father Jenco's most joyous moment came on his second morning in West Germany, when he was reunited with eleven members of his family who had flown from the U.S. aboard an Air Force jet. When the priest entered the hospital room in which the group had gathered, his brother John later recalled, "we all sort of melted in our tracks. Then there was all this squeezing and crying." John's first words to his long-lost brother: "I love you, and please forgive me for anything that I have ever done wrong to you." As they talked, the priest's relatives tried to make him laugh as they brought him up to date on family news. "When we're back in Chicago, we'll do everything we missed for almost two years--Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, everything," said John Jenco. "We're going to hide him. The press will not find him for a while."

Jenco's release, like that of others before him, highlighted the plight of the remaining Western hostages in Lebanon. Among them are three Americans still held by the same group: Associated Press Correspondent Terry Anderson, 38, David Jacobsen, 55, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, and Thomas Sutherland, 55, the university's acting dean of agriculture. Another American hostage, William Buckley, 58, a U.S. embassy political officer, was reported slain by Shi'ite extremists last October, but his death has not been confirmed. In addition to the Americans, there are seven Frenchmen, two Britons, an Irishman, a South Korean and an Italian who are missing and believed held by Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups.

Two men who had urgently sought the release of Jenco and the other hostages were among the first to telephone the priest in the Syrian capital of Damascus: Pope John Paul II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie. During his stopover there, Jenco also received a call from Vice President George Bush, who was in Frankfurt at the beginning of a ten-day trip to the Middle East. Bush had hoped to remain in West Germany for Jenco's arrival but in the end felt obliged to depart as scheduled for Israel.

From the moment he reached Europe, Father Jenco seemed nervous and preoccupied with the horrors he had left behind. At one point he apologized to the press for refusing to answer some questions, explaining that his silence was "a shout of fear and concern" for "my brothers still held hostage." Honoring a promise to his former captors, the priest released a seven-minute videotape in which Jacobsen pleads with the Reagan Administration to work more actively on the hostages' behalf. Said Jacobsen: "I'm very tired and frustrated. I'm very angry. Why won't the Government negotiate for our release?"

The Shi'ite extremists who are holding the three Americans are seeking the release of 17 of their kinsmen and allies who are imprisoned in Kuwait for bombing several buildings, including the French and American embassies in 1983. The Administration's position: it will not negotiate with terrorists and will not ask Kuwait to do so. In any case, the Kuwaitis have said they would refuse any such request.

As soon as he was able, Father Jenco left for Rome, London and Washington to deliver messages from his former captors to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and President Reagan. He was determined to do this in person in order to leave no doubt whatever in his captors' minds that he had kept his word, explained Terry Waite, the Archbishop's special envoy, who has visited Beirut three times in an effort to gain the hostages' release.

Before taking off for Rome, Jenco told a crowd of well-wishers, "Terry, David, Tom and I prayed constantly, 'I long to see the Lord and the land of the living.' " Then, in an extraordinary litany, Jenco addressed some of his former captors by name: "Haj, I'm on my way to see the Holy Father (about) what we discussed . . . Said, I thank you for your last-minute counsel that I will need to be an ambitious person to sustain the final hours of release. Said, I pray no one else will have to be an ambitious person." He also described "the small crucifix Ahab gave me" as "a great comfort during the final hours," adding, "In the final minutes of captivity with you, we also talked about our common belief in one God who is merciful and compassionate."

The kindly priest's public account of his 19-month captivity at times very nearly obscured the fact that it had been a dreadful ordeal. From the day he was abducted by eight men as he went about his duties as director of Catholic Relief Services in Lebanon, he was kept in solitary confinement, blindfolded and chained by his ankle to a wall. After six months, he was put in a small room with Anderson, Jacobsen and Sutherland. Until his release last September, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, a Presbyterian missionary, was also with them. The only clothing the captives were given was two pairs of underwear apiece--one for wearing, the other for washing. Each man was allowed to use a toilet only once a day, though a urinal bottle was provided. Apparently fearing a rescue mission by the Syrians if not the Americans, the captors moved Jenco to seven different locations, probably either in the slums of southern Beirut or in the Bekaa Valley. As a further precaution, the jailers never permitted the priest to see their faces.

At various times, however, the terrorists were given to small acts of kindness. They found Jenco a Bible and rosary as well as a crucifix and did not interfere with the hostages' prayers. They never beat Jenco or attempted to brainwash him. Occasionally the hostages were even able to laugh with their captors. Once, when one of them asked, "Is there anything you would like, Father?" the priest replied, "A taxicab."

On the last day of his captivity, Jenco found himself being driven through the Bekaa Valley. Bleary-eyed from a sleepless night, he was suddenly abandoned by his captors, who told him, "Start walking," then disappeared. His first uncertain steps seemed "like an eternity," he said later, until he made contact with Lebanese police and was whisked across the border to the protection of Syrian authorities and U.S. embassy officials in Damascus. It was there that he met Anderson's sister, Peggy Say, of Batavia, N.Y., who had gone to the Middle East to see if she could do anything to help secure her brother's release.

Why had the extremists freed Father Jenco at this time? Because of his deteriorating health, said the kidnapers, who knew of his heart condition and an eye infection caused by his blindfolds and presumably would not have wanted to be held responsible in the event of his death. William Casey, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, visited Damascus recently, but it was unclear whether this had anything to do with the priest's release. Jenco himself also spoke of the "religious factor," meaning the efforts of Terry Waite and other churchmen on behalf of the hostages. The indefatigable Waite, tight-lipped as always, said only that it was "not a coincidence" that he was in the Middle East at the time Jenco was freed, and revealed that he planned to return to Beirut shortly.

Still another influence may have been that of Syrian President Hafez Assad, who is believed anxious to improve his relations with the U.S. and to counteract his country's reputation as a sponsor of terrorism. Assad has recently renewed his efforts to gain the release of the Western hostages. A month ago, the Syrian leader told a visiting California Congressman that Syria expected to have "some good news very soon." One view, dismissed by the Administration, is that Assad not only secured Jenco's release but timed it to coincide with Vice President Bush's trip to the region. The Bush trip went reasonably well last week. With a personal film crew on hand to record his foreign policymaking, apparently to provide proof of his abilities when he runs for the presidency in 1988, the Vice President, wearing a dark blue skullcap, was photographed kissing Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, visiting the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust, touring a kibbutz and chatting earnestly with Natan (formerly Anatoly) Shcharansky, the Jewish human rights activist released by the Soviet Union in February.

Though Bush had hoped to visit Morocco's King Hassan II, who two weeks ago hosted a surprise meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the Vice President was rebuffed. The Moroccan ruler apparently did not want to create the impression that his diplomatic initiative had been an American invention. In Jordan, Bush met with King Hussein, who earlier dismissed the Vice President's call for a Hussein-Peres meeting. Hussein had pointed out that Jordan's long-standing policy is to reject such negotiations unless held within the context of an international peace conference. Bush did not bring his film crew to Jordan, suggesting to some that he holds the potential Jordanian vote in the U.S. in low regard. Nonetheless, on arrival in Amman, Bush and his wife Barbara enjoyed a dinner with the King and his American-born wife, Queen Noor. Said a Bush aide: "They got along like back-porch neighbors." After a sojourn at the King's palace on the Gulf of Aqaba, Bush was scheduled to go on to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

In the meantime, Father Jenco proceeded to Rome for an audience with the Pope, to London for a meeting with Archbishop Runcie and on to Washington to see Reagan. He also carried messages for the families of the remaining hostages, he said, though these were not so much letters as "messages from the heart." On Saturday he was due to reach Joliet at last, for a celebration and a reunion with some 45 more family members.

Back in London, describing his feelings, Jenco had recalled taking his nieces and nephews three years ago to see the movie E.T., in which the title character keeps saying, "Home, home." Said the priest gently: "That's what I want to do--I want to go home." What he will do after that is anyone's guess. His Servite Order announced last week that he has actually been offered his old job as Catholic Relief Services director in Lebanon. "I would sort of doubt that Father Jenco will want to go back to Beirut," an official of the order told the Chicago Sun-Times. "But you never know. He is the type of person who might say, " 'Sure.' "

With reporting by Andreas Gutzeit/Frankfurt and Scott MacLeod/ Cairo