I desire to announce to the elected representatives of the valiant,
blessed, triumphant American Bahá'í Community assembled beneath the dome of
the recently completed Mother Temple of the West on the occasion of the
Convention inaugurating the hundredth year of the first Bahá'í Century, the
momentous decision to convene, in May, 1944, an All-America Centennial
Convention comprising delegates to be separately elected by each State and
Province in the North American continent, and to which every Republic
of Latin America may send one representative. All groups, all isolated
believers, as well as all local communities already possessing Assemblies, will
henceforth share in the election of Convention delegates. The multiplication
of Bahá'í Centers and the remarkable increase in the number of groups and
isolated believers, prompt my decision. The historic occasion of next year's
festivities, commemorating alike the Hundredth Anniversary of the birth
of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh and the Fiftieth Anniversary of its establishment
in the Western Hemisphere, and celebrating the completion of the exterior
ornamentation of the first House of Worship in the Western World, imperatively
demand it. Details of the project have already been mailed. I
congratulate the best-loved American believers, I share their joy and wish
them God-speed, confident of still greater victories as they forge ahead in
the course of the second Bahá'í Century along the path leading them to
their high destiny. I hope to forward, in time for the solemn thanksgiving
service to be held in the auditorium of the Temple on the evening of May
twenty-second, at the hour of His epoch-making Declaration, a sacred portrait
of the Báb, the only copy ever sent out from the Holy Land, to be
unveiled at the dedication ceremony and to repose for all time, together
with Bahá'u'lláh's blessed hair, beneath the dome of the Holy Edifice within
the heart of the North American continent.
April 14, 1943