Proclamation 4182—International Clergy Week in the United States

Mediators between God and man and healers among people, clergymen are the custodians of the sacred.

To be a clergyman is a lofty calling which often entails difficulty and continuing sacrifice. Clergy serve their fellow men in parishes, hospitals, war zones, classrooms, orphanages, prisons, soup kitchens. In developing countries they assist in forming cooperatives, running playgrounds, relieving the hungry, sick and homeless.

Clergymen of the world contribute vastly to the cohesion, stability and growth of civilization. They urge respect for law, minister to humanitarian needs, counsel the afflicted, exhort to a higher morality, preserve and transmit the religious traditions of the ages.

To encourage all Americans to pay tribute to the clergymen of the world, the Congress, by House Joint Resolution 163, has requested the President to proclaim the week commencing January 28, 1973, as International Clergy Week in the United States.

It is therefore in this spirit of appreciation for the world's clergy and in recognition of their singular contribution to the spiritual, social and cultural evolution of society, that I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, proclaim the week beginning January 28, 1973, as International Clergy Week in the United States. I call upon all Americans to honor clergymen of all faiths, in this country and abroad, by appropriate ceremonies and activities.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of January in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred seventy-three and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

RICHARD NIXON