Religion: Words & Works

— Winding up its two-week conference in Paris, the World’s Alliance of the Y.M.C.A.s (TIME, Aug. 22) elected as president of its World Council Charles Dunbar Sherman, 36, of Liberia. First Negro to be elected to the post, President Sherman was educated in the U.S. (Howard University, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance arud Commerce), is a career diplomat for Liberia, where he is currently economic adviser to the government.

— The Rev. Robert Simon, 42, of Saone, France, was turned down cold by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago when he applied for permission to give a high-diving exhibition to raise money for his parish. Since 1947, high-diving Pere Simon has given some 35 performances in Europe (TIME, Sept. 3, 1951), the proceeds of which have rebuilt his war-damaged church, erected a dispensary and brought nursing sisters to his village. Simon announced his intention of trying his luck in another diocese. “It is true I am an athlete,” he said, “but above all else I am a priest who is interested in furthering the well-being of the less well-off members of my parish.”