Rúḥíyyih Rabbání, The Priceless Pearl, op. cit., p. 382.
Shoghi Effendi, Messages to America, op. cit., p. 53.
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, op. cit., p. 46.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Canada, op. cit., p. 51.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, op. cit., p. 377.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1979), p. 21.
Lester Bowles Pearson (1897-1972) was awarded the 1957 Nobel prize for peace for his formulation of international policy in the period after World War II, particularly for his plan that led to the establishment of the first United Nations’ emergency force in the Suez Canal in 1956, a response to the crisis created by the invasion of Egypt by British and French military forces, acting in agreement with those of Israel, following the seizure of the Suez Canal by Egypt. The first formal vote of international sanctions against aggression, taken in 1936 by the League of Nations, when Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia, was hailed by Shoghi Effendi as: “an event without parallel in human history”. (See Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, op. cit., p. 191.)
The three United Nations’ Secretaries-General mentioned were, in chronological order, Javier Pérez de Cuellar (1982-1991), Peru; Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-96), Egypt; Kofi Annan, (1997-present), Ghana.
Anne Frank (1929-1945) – Jewish youth, victim of Nazi genocide, captured in her family’s hiding place in the Netherlands in August 1944 and sent to the concentration camp at Belsen, where she died a year later. Her diary was published in 1952 under the title The Diary of a Young Girl and subsequently dramatized on the stage and in film. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) – American clergyman and Nobel laureate, one of the principal leaders of the American civil rights movement, who was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He is commemorated in the United States in a national holiday on the third Monday of January. Paulo Freire (1921-1997) – innovative Brazilian educator, whose pioneer work in adult education won him international fame, but led to two periods of imprisonment in his own country. Kiri Te Kanawa (1944- ) – Born in New Zealand of Maori ancestry, and today one of the world’s leading operatic divas. Awarded the Order of Dame Commander of the British Empire by H. M. Queen Elizabeth II, 1982. Gabriel García Marques (1928- ) – Colombian writer and novelist, winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1982, who was compelled to spend the 1960s and 1970s in voluntary exile in Mexico and Spain to escape persecution in his native land. Ravi Shankar (1920- ) – Indian composer and sitarist, whose impressive talents and tours of Europe and North America contributed to the awakening of interest in Indian music throughout the West. Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov (1921-1989) – Russian nuclear physicist, who abandoned scientific research to become the leading spokesman for civil liberties in the Soviet Union, for which he was awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, while suffering internal exile in his own land. “Mother Teresa” (Agnes Gonxha Borjaxhiu, 1910-1997) – Albanian born Roman Catholic nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity, whose self-sacrificing work on behalf of the poor, the homeless and the dying in Calcutta won her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Zhang Yimou (1951- ) – A leading director among China’s “Fifth Generation” film makers and winner of many professional awards for his sensitive and visually stunning work.
The three new National Spiritual Assemblies were Canada, which established a National Assembly separate from that of the United States in 1948, and the Regional Assemblies of Central America and the Antilles (1951) and South America (1951).