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Dinner in honour of Peter Smith

On the evening of Thursday 12 November 2009, there was a "surprise" dinner in my honour. This was to commemorate my 15 years of service trying to defend life and the family at the UN. In the past I had arranged dinners for Jeanne Head (National Right to Life Committee) and also one for Prof. Richard Wilkins. I had been able to get Richard over to New York in a very devious manner and he did not know the dinner was in his honour until I stood up at the table to introduce him. On the other hand I was unable to trick Jeanne. We just pretended it was a surprise.

So I was told about this dinner well in advance so that I could try to get as many UN delegates along as possible. These dinners are a good excuse to have a social evening with the UN delegates that we work with all year. This helps our working relationship with them. As these delegates are very busy people it is always difficult to get them all together for a whole evening. We were blessed to get 20 delegates/ambassadors, 30 NGOs and 10 students who were working with us at the UN that week, from Regent University (Virginia Beach, US)

The organisations sponsoring this event were Campaign Life Coalition (Canada), Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, also known as C-Fam (US), Focus on the Family (US), National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund (US), Doha International Institute for Family Studies & Development (Richard Wilkins, Qatar), the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (UK), Family Watch (US) and United Families International (US).

To give a flavour for the evening the following photos are included (Click on the thumbnails to show the full-size high-resolution images.) These were taken by Mr. Joseph Calandra, a student from Regent University who will be helping us out at several meeting at the UN next year.

I am here having a joke with Dr. Wanda Franz (president of National Right to Life, US), as the guests were starting to arrive. A most nervous time as you do not know how many will turn up:

This shot was taken before the meal began:

Front circle from left to right: Mr Patrick Buckley (lobbies with me at UN HQ, but is mostly at the UN in Geneva. See his excellent blog http://europeanlifenetwork.blogspot.com), Lucas Swanepoel (delegate for the Holy See Mission), me, Fr Philip Bene (delegate for the Holy See Mission), Archbishop Celestino Migliore (Apostolic Nuncio, head of the Holy See Mission in New York), Miss Jeanne Head (National Right to Life. A most dedicated pro-lifer) and Dr Wanda Franz (president, National Right to Life). In the back circle, on the left is Dr Douglas Sylva (formerly C-Fam), on the right, Austin Ruse (president, C-Fam).

Prior to the meal there were more people getting to know each other:

On the left is Darla St. Martin (a very political Assistant Executive Director of National Right to Life), meeting Fr. Bene (Holy See) with Patrick Buckley doing the honours.

At the start of the meal Archbishop Migliore said some very kind words about me, then said grace. He was introduced by Jeanne Head (Mistress of Ceremonies ), while myself, Wanda Franz and Patrick Buckley look on:

During the meal I was explaining to Doug how big the last fish I caught was, without any exaggeration. Sharon Slater, from Family Watch, is pretending not to listen in on the fishing tales!:

As part of the entertainment for the evening, Austin Ruse gave a toast. I was meant to be toasted. Poor Austin struggled with this small speech. There was an attempt to make me out to be a theological flirt. This was completely unsubstantiated. But what you can see from the photo is that we all enjoyed it:

After this Piero Tozzi (C-Fam) gave me a plastic fish called "Louis the large mouth bass", and Patrick Buckley gave a small dissertation on fly-fishing. There is no photographic evidence of this secondary toast where the credibility of my fishing narratives was questioned.

I was very touched by my good friends at National Right to Life. Here I am with the beautiful plaque that Wanda had just given my while Jeanne looks on:

After this small toast I stood up to give a sermon, I mean a few short words:

There was no need for me to refute any of the unsubstantiated innuendo from the two small toasts, nor for me to justify the size nor quantity of my vast fishing hauls. All were convinced by my short reply.

I then had to hand over the mic. to Fr. Bene who said a few kind words and then gave the benediction. The owner of the restaurant was watching very closely, perhaps he thought I would drop it!:

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