Messages to America

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 61 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