[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 458]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 458]]

                        ELIAN GONZALEZ AND FAITH

  (Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. ROS-LEHTINEN. Mr. Speaker, weak and thirsty, Elizabet spent the 
last hours of her life praying to God to protect her son, Elian; to 
guide him to safety in the land of liberty. She shaded Elian with her 
own body, gave him bottled water so he would not dehydrate, did 
everything humanly possible so that he would live.
  As darkness enveloped her frail body and before she disappeared into 
the depths of the Atlantic, she turned to Elian and said to him, ``My 
child, remember that prayer I taught you? Pray to your guardian angel. 
Ask him to watch over you, for you are in God's hands now.''
  Elizabet succumbed to the power of the sea, but Elian continued to 
pray and on Thanksgiving Day, he would be saved under what one of his 
rescuers has classified as miraculous circumstances.
  Mr. Speaker, one cannot help but wonder if there was divine 
intervention. As former President Ronald Reagan has said: without God, 
there is no prompting of the conscience.
  So I ask my colleagues to search their conscience and consider what 
is right and just before making a decision on Elian's case. We can 
still hear his mother's last wishes from the depths of the sea.

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