160210

The

S outher n C ross

February 10 to February 16, 2016

Reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 4963

www.scross.co.za

Priest of SAfounded order named a martyr

Page 4

A trip to WYD city Krakow

Page 10

R8,00 (incl VAT RSA)

Fr T: Why I veto designer bling weddings

Page 7

Bishops on local elections: Choose wisely

BY STUART GRAHAM

T Grade 3 Brescia House School pupil, Angela Dietrich, sits with the sculpture of her namesake, St Angela Merici. The sculpture of the founder of the Ursulines, who established Brescia House, was commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the school.

Sitting down with a saint STAFF REPORTER

A

JOHANNESBURG school has unveiled a sculpture of the founder of the Ursuline Sisters who established the school.

Brescia House School in Bryanston commissioned the sculpture of St Angela Merici to mark its 50 years of existence.

Sr Moekti Gondosasmito, a member of the Ursuline’s Rome-based general council, was a special guest at the unveiling.

Headmistresses Benedikte Nott and jubilee committee members had met with sculptor Rosamund O’Connor to talk through their vision of how they imagined the artwork.

“Of utmost importance was that St Angela needed to be approachable” so that the learners would be “able to relate to her and interact with her”, said Helga Bishop, the school’s marketing manager.

The site for the statue also needed to be carefully thought through. An area under a large shady camphor tree overlooking the lawns was identified.

Details of St Angela’s height, features, clothing, expression and attitude were keenly discussed.

“St Angela spent long hours walking, travelling from place to place, inspiring young women to a life with God. As such, she is lithe and athletic,” said Ms Bishop.

“She wears strong sensible sandals. Her robe folds delicately and sympathetically, and contrasts with the heavily textured cloak which protects her from the elements.

There is a trace of our African heritage and her association with us through a modified, geometric motif on her sandals which is echoed in her headscarf.”

The saint is seated on a rustic bench, “in an attitude of quiet repose; a gentle smile on her face, welcoming her visitor to sit next to her and talk”, Ms Bishop said.

“She beckons subliminally by turning towards the empty seat next to her, and her arm stretches along the top of the bench forming an arc of comfort to the guest. Her expression is receptive, her gaze gentle as she contacts the viewer who chooses to sit beside her.”

A quote on the plaque was taken from the writings of St Angela: “And I shall always be in your midst, helping your prayers.”

“And, indeed, today and going forward, both physically and spiritually, she is with the Brescia community,” Ms Bishop said.

HE bishops of Southern Africa have called on South Africans to vote with wisdom and responsibility when they cast their ballots in the municipal elections this year, and praised the state’s security personnel for protecting our democracy.

Given the widespread suffering in South Africa brought on by the struggling economy, unemployment, violence and corruption, the country is in dire need of representatives who have a genuine concern for the welfare of their citizens, Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference spokesman Archbishop William Slattery told The Southern Cross.

“The election provides us with opportunity to chose the kind of society we want, and the leaders we want to work for us,” he said.

“We need more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people and lives of the poor,” the archbishop said.

“As people of faith we pray for the coming elections, that they may be peaceful and bring about the kind of leaders who act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God.” Archbishop Slattery said that if we elect candidates who enter politics in a desire for power, wealth and status, then we will increase corruption and mismanagement at the cost of service delivery and the common good.

“Every South African has a serious responsibility to vote for and to support leaders who support peace and justice—not those who are obsessed with self-enrichment and scoring points in political rivalries,” he said.

The Catholic Church urges political parties to refrain from issuing intimidatory messages, and to take decisive and visible action when their supporters are involved in acts of intimidation and acts of harassment.

“In those areas where the local elections are likely to be hotly contested, especially metro municipalities, a high risk of political intolerance and violence may result,” Archbishop Slattery noted. “We therefore urge political parties to refrain from inciting any

A voter’s fingernail is marked after casting a ballot in an election. As South Africans prepare to vote in the municipal elections this year, the country’s bishops have called for voters to choose candidates responsibly, and for parties to maintain peace. kind of violence or anger.”

The bishops also call on political parties to respect the election results.

“And we call on the media to refrain from sensationalism and to report responsibly for the benefit of the common good.”

Archbishop Slattery also paid tribute to the country’s security officers as the election approaches.

He said many people still have negative associations with security personnel, who were seen as tools of the oppressors during apartheid, and therefore as the enemy.

That mindset persists even today, the archbishop noted.

“I salute the people of the security services because they place their lives on the line to protect the little ones, to protect our society and our democracy,” he said.

“When the other arms of government fail or unpopular laws are promulgated, they bear the consequences of restoring peace.”

Addressing security personnel directly, Archbishop Slattery said: “We understand that you are under particular pressure at the moment because there is a lot of aggression in our society. Every year 85 policemen die in the line of duty.

“The Church salutes you because you are the guarantee of our liberty.”

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2

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

LOCAL

New education board launched STAFF REPORTER

C

ATHOLIC education remains the last major institutional footprint of the Church in Southern Africa and if we value the Church’s presence at the margins of society, then we need to recognise the vital importance of the continued mission of the Church in education, according to a priest who represents Catholic schools.

In recent years the owners of Catholic schools and people involved in educational leadership, such as the Catholic Institute of Education (CIE), recognised the need to streamline the various bodies involved in the provision and service of Catholic education, said Fr Hugh

O’Connor, chair of Catholic Schools Proprietors Association.

The effort over the past two years to make this a reality has led to the establishment of the Catholic Board of Education (CBE).

The CBE was formally launched at the opening Mass of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference plenary session at Pretoria’s Sacred Heart cathedral—next to Loreto Convent School, which was the first Catholic school in the area when it was founded in 1878.

“Catholic education is important and it does matter, and together we continue to strive to serve both the needs of the Church and the Catholic community as well as the

wider society through our striving to provide education of excellence in the broad Catholic tradition and ethos,” Fr O’Connor said.

During his homily at the bishops’ Mass, Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg explained: “For several years religious communities have been discerning how to hand on the spirit and charism of their congregations, particularly in the ministry of education and schools, to lay leadership.

“The mission of Catholic education, fulfilled for so many years by religious, is now taking the form of a partnership between bishops, religious and lay faithful. The Catholic Board of Education will enable our

Church to continue to fulfil its prophetic mission and contribute to the whole education enterprise.”

Bishop Giuseppe Sandri, the current liaison bishop for education, was presented with a list of Catholic schools that the CBE will give guidance to through its leadership in Catholic education and a candle emblazoned with the logo for Catholic education.

“The scallop shell on the logo represents the different paths travelled and the beginning of this new journey in Christ,” Fr O’Connor said.

Bishop Sandri and those on the CBE were tasked with keeping the flame of Catholic education alight and burning.

Seen at the launch of the CBE are (from left) CIE North West regional manager Paul Mogorosi, CIE deputy director Anne Baker, Bishop Giuseppe Sandri (liaison bishop for education), and CIE director Janice Seland.

Italian honour for Little Eden pioneers

R

Those responsible for the establishment of St Benedict’s at the Bedfordview site in 1957: Fr P Hogan, Fr T Kelly, quantity surveyor Mr Strickland, contractor Mr Brocco, Oblate provincial Fr P Erasme, architect Mr Voorvelt, Fr H Kay, Br L Tiernay and foreman Mr Motu.

Oblates honoured by school they founded

BY STAFF REPORTER

L

EARNERS in South Africa today are reaping the fruits of the decision of a French priest to help revive the Church after the devastation caused by the French Revolution.

Fr Eugene de Mazenod, a priest from Marseilles, established the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1816. Although the original and primary focus of the Oblates has always been on missionary work among the poor, they have also been instrumental in the establishment of many schools.

One of these is St Benedict’s in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, which shares a common history with other great Oblate schools in Canada, North America, the Philippines and Australia.

The presence of the Oblates is still strongly felt at St Benedict’s, said headmaster Andre Oosthuysen.

“We congratulate the Oblates of Mary Immaculate on the celebra-

tion of their bicentennial and thank God for the many gifts and blessings that have been bestowed upon the world through their tireless work and selfless sacrifices,” said Mr Oosthuysen.

“We thank them for our school.

May Jesus Christ and Mary Immaculate continue to fan the flame of their life and mission.”

Oblate priests who have played a special role at St Benedict’s include Fr Philip Erasme OMI, who was instrumental in establishing St Benedict’s in 1957, and Frs Hugh Dalton, Jimmy Towell, Robert da Sylva and Patrick Hartin.

The first headmaster of St Benedict’s Preparatory School, the late Fr Jack O’Brien, was also an Oblate.

“So many Oblate priests and brothers have played instrumental roles in the history of our school,” Mr Oosthuysen said.

“Without the vision and charism of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, our school would not exist. They are an integral part of who we are.”

INVITATION

EPRESENTATIVES from the Little Eden homes in Gauteng and the Hyams family were invited by the town of Almenno San Bartholomeo Bergamo to attend a series of events to honour the homes’ founders, Danny and Domitilla Hyams.

The founders were honoured through the following events: • Unveiling of the signboard of the birthplace of Domitilla Rota in Albenza.

• Blessing of the new road named after Domitilla Rota.

• Recognition and conferment posthumously of “honorary citizenship” to Daniel George Hyams.

• The Associazione Domitilla Rota Hyams ONLUS offices in Italy has been named “House of Domit-

The late Danny and Domitilla Rota Hyams, founders of Little Eden, with a wooden statue of the Holy Family. illa and Daniel Hyams”.

Italy being the birth country of the late Domitilla, the town of Almenno San Bartholomeo Bergamo took this opportunity to honour her for the work she carried out in

South Africa through Little Eden Society, which cares for 300 children and adults with profound intellectual disability, and also recognised her husband, Danny Hyams, for the role he played as a support to Domitilla.

The couple met in Italy when Danny, who was a South African escaped prisoner of war in 1943, took refuge at Domitilla’s house.

This event in Italy comes at a time when the Society prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2017. n If you would like to know more about Danny and Domitilla or the work carried out by their treasured Little Eden Society within the community, contact Nichollette Muthige on 011 609 7246 or marketing@littleeden.org.za

Water gift to drought-hit Aliwal

BY STAFF REPORTER

D

E La Salle Holy Cross College in Johannesburg has been overwhelmed by the community rallying to help the children at the Holy Cross Primary School in Aliwal North after a recent “Water Drive” appeal.

Sr Bridget, principal of Holy Cross Primary school in Aliwal North, had asked the Johannesburg college for help after the worsening water shortage in Aliwal North.

Her pupils had no water, the taps were dry, and the children were drinking contaminated water in desperation.

On hearing the news, De La Salle College’s environment committee immediately launched a “Water Drive”.

Skynet Worldwide Express’ Diederick Stopforth delivered 8 000 litres of water collected by the college to the school in Aliwal North.

De La Salle is hoping to be able to help the residents in Aliwal North throughout the winter months.

To date, three trucks have left the

Diederick Stopforth and his Skynet Worldwide Express team with the eight-tonne truck filled with water, college principal Debbie Harris, and learners from De La Salle Holy Cross College.

College with over 15 tonnes of water, collected from the local community and participating schools.

Sr Bridget is distributing the water to her pupils, their families, the oldage homes and the community.

“We are thrilled with the water,”

she said.

“I have many sick children at present due to this water problem and this is serious! I had very happy people helping to unload the trucks so it went quickly and we are overjoyed with the help.”

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LOCAL

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

3

Zimbabweans pull together in food crisis

BY BRONWEN DACHS

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Josua Muton, a Grade 2 pupil at St Benedict’s Junior Preparatory School in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, is helping Fr Emil Blaser OP of Radio Veritas to label about 2 000 bottles of water that were transported to Senekal in the Free State as part of the drought-relief initiative.

Fr Matthias Nsamba of Sacred Heart parish in Qoqodala, Queenstown diocese, designed this Year of Mercy sticker to help families create a sacred spot of prayer within their homes. Fr Nsamba and his parish pastoral council also wrote a parishioners’ handbook that details over 28 pages how they and the parish community can live out the Year of Mercy.

ITH poverty on the rise and a drought compounding Zimbabwe’s problems, people are struggling to make ends meet, and the poor are becoming poorer, Church workers have warned.

In Zimbabwe’s hospitals and other health facilities, “patients need to pay for everything: painkillers, drips, injections and scans,” said Getrude Chimange, coordinator of the Justice & Peace Commission in Mutare diocese.

“Industries have closed, leading to breadwinners losing their jobs and turning to informal trade on the streets, where they make very little money,” she said.

“There are people who die on hospital operating tables when the electricity shuts down,” Ms Chimange said, noting that “there are generators but these need fuel, which they don’t always have”.

Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate is estimated at more than 80%. An average monthly income for a family of four in Zimbabwe is around $180 (about R2 900).

The fall of the South African rand against the dollar was a harsh blow for households that depend on remittances from family members working in South Africa, said Fr Frederick Chiromba, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The cost of Zimbabwe’s staple starch, mealie meal, has risen steeply.

A month’s supply for the average family in urban areas costs about $20 (R325) and more than $30 (R485) in rural southern Zimbabwe, where the drought has hit hardest.

Countrywide water shortages are a major problem, as well as the long distances many people have to walk to get to health facilities, Mutare’s Ms Chimange said.

Every Thursday, Ms Chimange interviews women who come to see her about specific needs.

“The numbers are rising with in-

Villagers gather food at a distribution point near Harare. With poverty on the rise and a drought compounding Zimbabwe’s problems, people are struggling to make ends meet and the poor are becoming poorer, Church workers say. (Photo: Aaron Ufumeli, EPA/CNS) creasing poverty, but we do not have funds” to go beyond helping 40 women a week, she said. The funds are raised by priests from donors in developed countries.

In Harare, parishioners are making their own peanut butter, among other income-generating projects.

Zimbabweans “are being innovative and resilient as they look for ways to survive” the country’s worsening economic situation, Fr Chiromba said.

At St Peter’s church in the Harare suburb of Mbare, parishioners are involved in more than 20 projects that enable them to put food on their tables, parish secretary Lavender Sambata said.

“People come together to help one another,” she said. “They sew school uniforms, raise chickens to sell and grind peanuts into paste.”

“People look out for one another, within their limited means,” Fr Chiromba said, noting that in some parishes, “people choose to pay school fees for those who can’t afford them”.

Sr Diana Kanyere, a member of the Little Children of Our Blessed

Lady, who started the income-generating projects at St Peter’s, now runs eight houses that serve as homes for 88 orphans in Harare’s Makumbe parish.

The 48 primary school children and the 40 attending secondary school need to be fed and clothed, and Sr Kanyere is planning similar projects to meet their needs.

The peanut butter project “provides nutrition, which is important for the children who otherwise would eat only plain porridge for breakfast,” Sr Kanyere said “We will make extra peanut butter and sell it at schools and other places,” she said. Another project she hopes to start is making detergents, such as liquid soap.

One woman is employed in each house to oversee the children’s care, and there are a few other helpers too, she said.

“People work hard to generate income, and when they make money through the project they repay the initial amount that they were given. This money is then used to help someone else start up,” Sr Kanyere said.—CNS

East London Knights work to feed the hungry

BY STAFF REPORTER

The parish of Robertsham in Johannesburg hosted a family fun day in honour of Don Bosco and his vocation to children. It was accompanied by an outdoor Mass at Theo Wassenaar School opposite the parish church in Robertsham. Fr John Thompson (far left) is pictured with the Don Bosco youth before Mass began. The Mass entrance procession was preceded by the Don Bosco youth, with some of the girls performing a liturgical dance in honour of the founder of the Salesian order. Mass was concelebrated by Fr Eugene Hennessy and Fr Pauwel who has just recently come to the parish, assisted by deacons Victor Ho and Mike Nolan.

THe jOURneYS OF A LIFeTIMe!

K

NIGHTS of da Gama in East London raised food worth an estimated R116 223 in 2015.

The Knights of da Gama St Patrick Council continued their “Collect a Can” project to feed the hungry.

Tin collections were carried out twice a month at two Spar outlets: Ashmel Spar in Berea and Spargs Super Spar in Beacon Bay, said council treasurer Charles Hutchinson.

The Knights put a “conservative” price on the tins at R12 each, which

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accumulates to a combined value of R83 136. Collected packets containing soft goods—such as tea, coffee, sugar, soups, pastas, milk, and so on—amounted to an estimated total of R20 160.

“From our food collection throughout the year we packed a total of 930 food parcels, which were handed to the various parishes in East London, who then distributed to the needy,” Mr Hutchinson said.

“In the same complex as Ashmel Spar is a clothing shop named

Berkley at Berea, and every so often they would kindly donate a packet of clothing to us for distribution to the poor. We estimated that the value of this clothing was R8 240 for 2015,” he said.

“We are grateful to the two Spar outlets for allowing us to do our collections and also to Berkley for their unending support,” he said.

“We are also most grateful to the generosity of the East London public who so unselfishly support us each month.”

4

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

INTERNATIONAL

Pope: I have admired China since I was a boy

BY CAROL GLATZ

T A man is blessed by a deacon with holy water and incense during a service led by married, indigenous deacons in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. (Photo: David Agren/CNS)

Pope to affirm indigenous Mexican deacons’ ministry

BY DAVID AGREN

D

EACON Anselmo Hernandez received a call on a recent Saturday afternoon while walking down the main street of an indigenous community of Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, advising him of a neighbour who had died that afternoon. Within an hour, he had blessed the coffin, led the family in prayers and read with them from the Bible.

“There are not many priests here so we offer them assistance whenever possible,” Deacon Hernandez, 64, said of his role as a deacon serving the Guadalupe barrio. “There will be a Mass tomorrow with a priest.”

Communities such as Bachajon have come to depend on indigenous deacons like Deacon Hernandez, who play an important part in serving the Church and evangelising remote regions of Chiapas state. In the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas, priests’ services are in short supply and the mostly indigenous population— many speaking Mayan languages— has abandoned the Church in droves.

Such is the shortage in Bachajon, set in the highlands region of Chiapas, that locals simply call indigenous deacons in times of need. The funeral Mass that Deacon Hernandez said would be celebrated the next day was unlikely to occur at all, according to the local priests at the Jesuit mission in Bachajon. The priests say carrying

out Church roles in the region would be unthinkable without the work of indigenous deacons, whose roles are not seen as subordinate to those of priests.

“The priests [here] are a support for the work that the deacons do,” said Jesuit Father Jose Aviles, vicar for peace and justice in the diocese of San Cristobal de Las Casas. “They are the real pastors.”

A married father of 12 with “20 something” grandchildren, Deacon Hernandez is among the hundreds of indigenous deacons ordained by Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of San Cristobal de Las Casas, who died in 2011 and went about building an “autochthenous Church,” in which indigenous populations could express their faith in enculturated ways.

That pastoral approach, promoted also as potentially alleviating the perennial shortage of priests, attracted unfavourable Vatican scrutiny and was banned almost immediately after Bishop Ruiz retired in 2000. But with the election of Pope Francis, the ordination of indigenous deacons— all married—has resumed in rural Chiapas, while liturgical texts translated into Mayan languages have also been approved.

Pope Francis visits the area on February 15, where he will celebrate a Mass for the indigenous people, reading from Scripture and praying in the Tzotzil and Tzeltal languages. —CNS

HE Catholic Church must respect “with a capital ‘R’” China’s rich traditional culture and “age-old” wisdom, Pope Francis said in an interview.

Dialogue between China and the rest of the world, including the Church, is necessary because it is the only way to achieve peace, he said.

“Dialogue does not mean that we end up with a compromise, half the cake for you and the other half for me.”

“No, dialogue means 'Look, we have got to this point, I may or may not agree, but let us walk together.'

This is what it means to build,” he said in a lengthy interview with Asia Times.

The interview took place at the Vatican with Francesco Sisci, a longtime Italian correspondent based in China.

The pope also included “my best wishes and greetings to President Xi Jinping and to all the Chinese people” for Chinese New Year .

“I wish to express my hope that they never lose their historical awareness of being a great people, with a great history of wisdom, and that they have much to offer to the world,” the pope said.

In the hour-long interview, the pope said he has admired China ever since he was a boy and sees it as “a reference point of greatness,” as a

Pilgrims wave China’s flag as Pope Francis leads his general audience in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican (Photo: Paul Haring/CNS) country and culture “with inexhaustible wisdom”.

He said Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, the 16th-century missionary to China, showed the Church that “it is necessary to enter into dialogue with China” because of its wealth of wisdom and history—as “a land blessed with many things”.

“The Catholic Church, one of whose duties is to respect all civilisations, before this civilisation, I would say, has the duty to respect it with a capital ‘R’. The Church has great potential to receive culture,” the pope said.

However, when asked about the one-child policy that was introduced in China in 1980, the pope said the impact of that policy was not “natural”.

“The problem for China of not having children must be very painful, because the pyramid is then

inverted, and a child has to bear the burden of his father, mother, grandfather and grandmother. And this is exhausting, demanding, disorientating. It is not the natural way.”

It is only by becoming reconciled with one’s past and errors that can one grow and mature, he said.

It's also “healthy for a person to have mercy toward himself, not to be sadistic or masochistic. That is wrong. And I would say the same for a people; it is healthy for a population to be merciful toward itself,” he said.

When asked about how to face the challenges brought by China’s explosive economic growth such as environmental disasters and harm to families, the pope said facing reality and talking about it—not hiding from it—were the only ways to find possible solutions.

Pope Francis said China should not be afraid of dialogue and encounter with the rest of the world, and vice versa.

China’s concern about outside influence in internal affairs has meant it requires Catholic communities to register with the government-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association, which has ordained bishops without the approval of the pope.

The Vatican has not had diplomatic relations with China since shortly after the country’s 1949 communist revolution, however, both sides have regular contact.—CNS

Priest of SA-founded order a martyr A PRIEST of an order that was founded in South Africa will be beatified as a martyr to Nazism.

Fr Engelmar Unzeitig, who has been called “Angel of Dachau”, belonged to the Congregation of Mariannhill Missionaries, an order founded by Abbot Franz Pfanner in 1909 in KwaZulu-Natal.

A young priest with Czech roots serving in Germany and Austria, Fr Unzeitig was arrested by the Nazis on April 21, 1941.

His crime? Preaching against the Third Reich from his pulpit, particularly against their treatment of Jews.

He encouraged his congregation to be faithful to God and to resist the lies of the Nazi regime.

As punishment, Fr Unzeitig was sent to what has been called the “largest monastery in the world”: Dachau concentration camp, near Munich, which became renowned for the number of ministers and priests within its walls.

The camp housed some 2700 clergy, about 95% of

Fr Engelmar Unzeitig whom were Catholic priests, making it one of the largest residences for priests in the history of the Church.

Fr Unzeitig was just 30 years old, and two years ordained, when he was sent to Dachau. Born in 1911 as Hubert Unzeitig in Greifendorf, in what is now the Czech Republic, Fr Unzeitig joined the seminary at the age of 18 and became a priest for the Mariannhill Missionaries, whose motto is: “If no one else will go: I will go.” There he was given the religious name Engelmar.

While imprisoned in the concentration camp, he studied Russian in order to be able to help the influx of

prisoners from Eastern Europe, and had a reputation at the camp as a holy man.

Treatment of the priests and ministers at Dachau was unpredictable— sometimes they were allowed to worship, at others they were severely treated. On one particular Good Friday, dozens of priests were selected for torture to mark the occasion.

For several years, Fr Unzeitig was able to remain in relatively stable health despite the poor treatment he received. However, when a wave of the often-fatal typhoid fever swept through the camp in 1945, he and 19 other priests volunteered to do what no one else wanted to: care for the sick and dying in the typhoid barracks, an almost-certain death sentence in and of itself.

He and his companions spent their days bathing and caring for the sick, praying with them and offering last rites.

On March 2, 1945, Fr Unzeitig succumbed to typhoid fever himself.

Pope Francis officially acknowledged Fr Unzeitig as a martyr who died as a result of hatred of the faith, which opens the path for his beatification, the next step in becoming a canonised saint.—CNA

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INTERNATIONAL

Vocations crisis needs prayer not despair

BY CAROL GLATZ

No movie debut for pope

BY CAROL GLATZ

Pope Francis arrives to lead an audience with religious at the Vatican.

(Photo: Paul Haring/CNS) Pope Francis said he preferred to speak from his heart “because it’s a bit boring to read” a prepared talk.

The pope highlighted the three most important “pillars” of consecrated life: being prophetic; being near all people; and having hope.

Obedience for a religious is not the same as “military obedience”, he said; it’s about giving one’s heart and seeking to discern what is being asked.

Just doing whatever one feels like is “anarchy of the will”, which is “the child of the devil, not God”.— CNS

OPE Francis will not be an actor in a proposed movie based on the Gospels, a Vatican spokesman said.

While details about how the pope may or may not be involved in the movie project are not yet known, it was clear the pope was not an actor and would not have an acting role as claimed by a film production company, the spokesman said.

An entertainment publicity and marketing firm said that the pope would be “playing himself in the family film Beyond the Sun from AMBI Pictures”.

Monika Bacardi, AMBI Pictures co-founder, was quoted saying: “We appreciate Pope Francis’ permission to film him and use his image in our movie.”

The film aims to help children “learn and incorporate Jesus’ parables” by portraying children from different cultures searching for Jesus in the world around them.

All profits from the film are to go to two charities in Argentina, which help young adults and vulnerable children.—CNS

Syrian refugee children in a child-friendly space created by Mercy Corps inside the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan. Syria’s neighbour, which has hosted hundreds of thousands of refugees for the past five years, says it cannot continue to bear the brunt of the burden. (Photo: Dale Gavlak/CNS)

Captive nun: God was so near

BY FRANCOIS GLOUTNAY

Scholar: Misinterpreted Bible texts N lead to violence, fundamentalism

BY MICHAEL SWAN

M

OST people have never heard a homily preached on Deuteronomy 20:10-18. It’s kind of difficult to apply these Godgiven rules of war to daily life in the 21st century.

The Bible was written in a very different place at a very different time by people whose self-understanding and world-view was formed by forces people today might understand intellectually but struggle to feel deep inside.

Franciscan Father Elias Mallon said it need not be so: It is possible to find some deeper Christian meaning in difficult texts from the Bible. But it requires study and an understanding of the history embedded in biblical literature, which was collected over a 1 000-year span and finally accepted as part of the Bible more than 17 centuries ago.

The New York priest has spent a lifetime reading, translating and understanding the ancient languages which, once mastered, gave him insights into the Bible and the

5

P

R

ESPOND to the crisis of vocations with intensified prayer, not despair or a lax admissions process, Pope Francis told women and men religious.

He said he is tempted to lose hope, too, asking God, “What is happening? Why is the womb of consecrated life sterile?”

But he warned against fast fixes, saying some religious “congregations experiment with ‘artificial insemination’”, in which they accept anybody, leading to a host of problems.

The vocations process must be done “with seriousness, and one must discern well that this is a true vocation and help it grow”, he told members of religious orders, secular institutes and consecrated virgins in the Vatican audience hall.

The pope met with some 5 000 men and women taking part in events in Rome to mark the close of the Year for Consecrated life.

Handing his written text over to Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Consecrated Life and Institutes for Apostolic Life,

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

monotheistic cultures of the three Abrahamic religions. He’s been a contributor to Muslim-Christian dialogue since 1985, and he is the author of Islam: What Catholics Need to Know.

When preachers and ordinary believers misinterpret their sacred texts, the result is almost always fundamentalism, Fr Mallon said.

Fundamentalism is usually the result of reading an ancient, sacred text as if it were a newspaper or a modern textbook—reading the words without any awareness of the culture or the historical circumstances in which they were first spoken, he said.

“All of our texts are ancient. All of our texts come out of a context,” Fr Mallon said. “It’s a world that wasn't pluralistic. It was more violent.”

The Islamic State, Boko Haram, alShabab, Ian Paisley’s “defensive militia” in Northern Ireland, Lebanon’s Phalange militias in the 1980s, volunteer militias in Jewish West Bank settlements all insist on plucking out bits of sacred texts to justify violence.

When Moses urges the people of Israel to take “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” the Bible is not urging vengefulness, he said; it’s trying to limit the violence. Blood feuds at that time demanded complete annihilation of an enemy. “Eye for eye” was a way of limiting the violence.

A thousand years later, Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that limiting the violence was not enough.

“Somebody said once as soon as you find God loving the things you love and the people you love and hating the things you hate and the people you hate, then you know it’s not God,” Fr Mallon said.—CNS

OTRE Dame Sister Gilberte Bussiere, 76, has recalled her 2014 kidnap ordeal in cameroon. She was abducted in the middle of the night in April 2014, in Tchere, a small hamlet in northern Cameroon.

“I was wearing a nightdress. He grabbed my arm, pulled me out of my cabin and dragged me through the bushes, then tossed me into a car,” said Sr Bussiere.

“I ended up in the backseat of a car, with seven armed abductors.

One of them constantly pointed a gun at me. They were laughing and humiliating me, making fun of the fact that I screamed furiously during my capture. They were very disrespectful, trying to lift my nightdress.”

Sr Bussiere, who had served as a missionary in Cameroon since 1979, returned to Canada after her release.

She said the first two hours of her abduction were stressful. Then, she said, she “chose to let things go”.

Sr Bussiere tried to keep the same state of mind for the next 58 days.

“Our material deprivation was harsh. We had nothing, besides our clothes,” she said. “But I found out that when you’re deprived of everything, God looks after you and fulfills you with everything you may

need.”

“I never felt God’s presence as I did during my captivity.

I never enjoyed more deeply the soothing power of God’s words, Sr Gilberte Bussiere as well as the joys of prayer,” said Sr Bussiere.

She was kept with two kidnapped Italian priests, Frs Gianantonio Allegri and Giampaolo Marta. They prayed together every day.

“Our guards...were between 14 and 25 years old. They were hungry and hopeless youngsters. They were there because they couldn’t even feed themselves. They couldn’t read and never went to school whatsoever. We couldn’t even talk with them, since they only spoke Haoussa, a Nigerian dialect.

“When people are hungry, when they have no access to education or health care, they get angry. Some of them become extremists. No, there’s no way I can feel any hatred towards them.”

No criminal or terrorist organisation ever claimed responsibility for the kidnappings.—CNS

CeLeBRATe WITH US A ReVIVAL OF MISSIOnARY eVAnGeLISATIOn WITHIn THe CHURCH

THE HOLY YEAR OF MERCY

LIVING ORDINARY LIVES WITH EXTRAORDINARY LOVE

a morning reflection on the 20th February by Fr. Kees Thonissen OFMCap. After tea he will talk about the Damietta peace initiative, particularly in Africa.

Date Time Place

Saturday 20 February 2016 9 for 9.30 - 13.00 Koinonia retreat centre, 53 1st street, Bez Valley, Jhb (big green gates) not far from Catholic Bookshop.

Contact Sr Jacky 011 624 1002, 072 193 5413 Cost R30 - for tea and sandwiches Contemplative outreach is hosting this event, we welcome you to join us

A donation towards the Damiette peace initiative will be welcomed

200

CeLeBRATInG YeARS OF OUR eXISTenCe TO eVAnGeLISe THe POOR AnD THe MOST ABAnDOneD

THe OBLATe PROVInCeS OF SOUTHeRn AFRICA CeLeBRATe THeIR BI-CenTennIAL jUBILee DATe: 6 AUGUST 2016 VenUe: ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SHOW GROUnDS TIMe:

PIeTeRMARITZBURG, KZn 09H00

For further enquiries, please contact the Oblate Provincial Office in Durban: +27 31 205 9321; admin@omi.org.za

6

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

LEADER PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

Attacks on priests

S

OUTH African Catholics were shocked this month to learn of the brutal attack on a Cape Town priest in his presbytery during an apparent robbery.

Fr Charles Prince required emergency surgery to save his eyesight after he sustained several head injuries in the sadistic assault by the criminals who did not care whether their victim would live or die.

Alarmingly, the robbers knew that they were assaulting a priest. Before entering the presbytery they had broken into St Anthony’s church in Langa, attempting to steal the tabernacle.

We may give thanks that Fr Prince was spared the fate of the priests and nuns who were murdered by criminals in the past two decades or so.

Catholics still feel the grief of losing to violent crime priests and religious such as Fr Mathieu Ceyssens OMI, Fr Eammon O’Neill, Sr Theodelind Schreck HF, Fr Albert Pelemann OSB, Fr Michele D’Annucci CSS, Fr Bongani Eric Shozi, Fr Declan Collins SDB, Fr Manus Campbell OFM, Fr Gerard Fitzsimons, Sr Clementine Brantschen OSV, Br Benedict Mkhize TOR, Fr Allard ’Mako OMI, Fr Ernst Plöchl CMM, Fr Lionel Sham, Fr Daniel Mahula, Fr Louis Blondel M.Afr., Fr Senzo Mbokazi, Sr Mary Paule Thacke CPS, Sr Stefani Tiefenbacher CPS and others.

Clearly the notion of attacking and even murdering priests and religious—people who have dedicated their lives to serving God and his people—no longer is a taboo in South African society.

Especially priests who live solitary lives in their presbyteries are in danger of being regarded as fair game by criminals who have no scruples.

But we should beware of being caught up in a mood of panic. The attacks and killing of priests and religious still have the power to shock us so profoundly because they are still relatively rare. Perhaps the taboo against attacking people of the cloth still retains some currency.

Nevertheless, the attack on Fr Prince is a stark reminder that our priests and religious are not safe. Every parish should be prompted by Fr Prince’s ordeal to initiate a review of their pastor’s security arrangements.

Geography provides no assur-

ance of security. While Fr Prince was attacked in a poor township, the last serious assault of a priest in the same city, that of Fr Andrew Cox, occurred in the very wealthy suburb of Constantia.

The violence against priests and religious brings into sharp focus the corruption of ethics in our society, a degeneration which finds expression especially in the brutish crime against the innocent and defenceless, especially children.

Women are regularly raped, children—toddlers, even—are violated and killed, and those who offer their lives’ vocation to the service of humanity are robbed and murdered, leaving an indelible stain on our nation’s moral fabric.

The sources of crime in South Africa are diverse. Poverty certainly plays a role, but most poor people do not commit crimes; most often they are the victims of it. Crime in South Africa percolates not from poverty but from society’s decaying moral fabric.

This decay is evident on every level: on dusty township streets as much as in corporate boardrooms—and, deplorably, in government, even at the highest level.

Crime is trivialised when the friends of the mighty are required to serve only small fractions of their jail sentences; when those who broke laws are fêted as martyrs when they go to prison; when the president of the nation claims to be innocent of charges of corruption but has fought tooth and nail not to answer these charges in a court of law.

Crime is trivialised when criminals—armed or white collar—find protection in their communities through collaboration, tolerance, apathy or fear.

Crime is trivialised when there is one set of justice for the wealthy and another for the poor.

We must be outraged by the moral malaise of a country where lawlessness is being taken for granted, from street thuggery to business and politics.

However, in our outrage we must not preach vengeance nor declare resignation. Rather we must focus on what needs to be done to restore to our society the ethics that may liberate us from the terror of criminality.

Coming out

The Editor reserves the right to shorten or edit published letters. Letters below 300 words receive preference. Pseudonyms are acceptable only under special circumstances and at the Editor’s discretion.

Name and address of the writer must be supplied. No anonymous letter will be considered.

W

HEN my daughter was n Grade 11 she “came out” t devastated me Had a my Catho c teach ng a ed her?

When vo ced my concern to a very good r end her response was “She s your daughter and you ove her That carr ed me through the years My daughter s now n a steady re at onsh p w th a woman Over these three years have watched the r re at onsh p grow The r ove or each other s no d erent to that o a man and a woman My daugh ter s happy What more can a mother want?

They are now contemp at ng marr age And there was torn be tween my daughter s happ ness and the teach ngs o the B b e as had been taught My m nd s now at ease thanks to my par sh pr est and the anonymous pr est who wrote the art c e “Does the B b e condemn gays and esb ans?” anuary 19 who both vo ced the same op n on w g ve them my b ess ng when the day comes or where there s ove there s God Name w thhe d Cape Town

Marriage not a private affair

T

HE observat ons and w se thought u quest ons n Chr s Raw ns etter December 2 h gh ght some o the many conse quences that re g ous nst tut ons and the state are aced w th by the eg s at on o same sex un ons The trad t ona Chr st an prac t ce o marr age s between one man and one woman Gn 2 24 “God made them ma e and ema e” Gn1 27 The Church has a so seen the Noah s ark story as pre gur ng our sa vat on through God s g t o grace and the un t ve structure o man and woman or procreat on two and two ma e and ema e went nto the ark w th Noah as God had commanded Noah Gn 79 St Pau n no uncerta n terms teaches aga nst the d sordered acts o same sex re at onsh ps n h s et ter to the Romans Rom 1 21 32 The ear y Church recogn sed the sacramenta nature o marr age “ t s proper or men and women who w sh to marry to be un ted w th the consent o the b shop so that the r marr age w be acceptab e to the ord and not entered upon or the sake o ust” St gnat us etter to Po ycarp 110AD Another Church ather St Cyr o erusa em 315 386 emphas sed what marr age s and what t s not “those who have embarked upon the matr mon a state or procre at on o ch dren and not or the sake o ndu gence”

Freedom o cho ce seems to be the new mantra and new “truth” o modern ty Modern re at onsh ps seem most y about se sh attrac t ons o “ a ng n ove hav ng a great t me” and grat cat on o our carna des res w th the person we are “attracted to” Trad t ona re at onsh ps were about nd ng a spouse not a over Marr age s not a pr vate matter but a un t ve pub c bus ness o two n d v dua s ma e and ema e where procreat on s oundat ona to ra se o spr ng Marr age has a pub c and soc a purpose that attaches athers and mothers to ch dren and ch dren to athers and mothers The ro es o mother and ather are not nterchangeab e because o the b o og ca and phys o og ca d erences between ma e and ema e Homosexua un ons w take us to a gender ess am y structure where the ather and mother gures are den ed and d sm ssed The Catho c Church can never sacramenta se same sex un ons wh ch depart rom the natura order and the depos t o a th handed to the apost es by Chr st Henry Sy vester Cape Town

Leviticus rules

T

HE proh b t on on homosexua ty n Lev t cus 18 22 and the proh b t ons o var ous orms o n cest wh ch precede them are ad dressed not on y to h gh pr ests but to “the sons o srae ” genera y 18 2 So a God s peop e not ust h gh pr ests were orb dden to en gage n homosexua acts See a so verse 26 wh ch says “You must not do any o these hate u th ngs ne ther nat ve nor stranger v ng among you ” Ly ng w th a man as w th a woman s one o the “hate u th ngs” here re erred to verse 22 So the ban on homosexua ty ex tends much urther than h gh pr ests JD McC ymont

Consequences for Catholics

I

UNDERSTAND your dec s on to pub sh the art c e “Does the B b e condemn gays and esb ans?” by a pr est who rema ns anonymous

PRICE CHECK

Op n ons exp essed n The Sou he n C oss espec a y n Le e s o he Ed o do no necessa y e ec he v ews o he Ed o o s a o he newspape o o he Ca ho c h e a chy The e e s page n pa cu a s a o um n wh ch eade s may ex change op n ons on ma e s o deba e Le e s mus no be unde s ood o neces sa y e ec he each ngs d sc p nes o po c es o he Chu ch accu a e y Le e s can be sen o PO Box 2372 Cape Town 8000 o ed o @sc oss co za o axed o 021 465 3850

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Cardinal Napier: Drugs are the new oppressor

BY STUART GRAHAM

A c r o w n o f t h o r n s i s s e e n i n a c h u r c h . T h i s y e a r A s h We d n e s d a y i s o n F e b r u a r y 1 0 . I t marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, during which Christians reflect on t h e s u ff e r i n g o f J e s u s , e s p e c i a l l y o n G o o d F r i d a y, o b s e r v e d o n M a r c h 2 5 t h i s y e a r. T h e L e n t e n s e a s o n e n d s w i t h E a s t e r, o n M a r c h 2 7 . ( P

P

ARISHES ha ve been called to fight back against “almost invincible” drug addiction which, according to Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, has taken over from apartheid as the new oppressor of South African society

deep down there is poverty, [and] the breakdown of the family, of community structures and of society.

Worst of all is the “catastrophic” abandoning of good morals and upright behaviour, he said.

“An ever-present factor is the sense of

What Lent means in

BY CINDY WOODEN

L

ENT is a time of conversion and a time to deepen one’s faith, demonstrating and sharing it through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, Pope Francis says in his Lenten message for 2016.

“Faith finds expression in concrete every

m Imagine a Church without The Southern Cross

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ST MARTIN DE PORRES BLESSINGS PILGRIMAGE

Visiting Paris, Nevers (incorruptible body of St Bernadette), Lourdes, Rome, Vatican City (Papal Audience), Lanciano, San Giovanni Rotondo, and Assisi.

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anuary13 but cannot nd any bas s n the re erences to the B b e that are nc uded n the art c e that suggest that homosexua ty s ac ceptab e or peop e w th homosex ua des res but not acceptab e or men who regard themse ves as het erosexua nd the “Four Loves” attr buted to CS Lew s very he p u n my un derstand ng o “ ove” espec a y that o God be eve that homoph a s w despread but homosexua ty s not one des res to carry out ho mosexua acts then one must ac cept the consequences one wants to be a Catho c But why are pr ests many o whom must exper ence erot c temp tat on—heterosexua or homosex ua or a know—requ red to rema n ce bate but our anonymous pr est seems to suggest that ho moph c partners shou d be ree to engage n homosexua acts The art c e on the oppos te page by the gay ce bate b ogger made an nterest ng contrast to that o the anonymous pr est Hav ng made the above po nts the pastora care o pract s ng ho mosexua s by the Catho c Church must be the same as or any s nner Paddy Ross Cape Town

Not a choice

C

OMMENDAT ONS on your ed tor a and the art c es on LGBT peop e anuary 13 t was re resh ng to read art c es present ng an a ternat ve v ew o what the B b e says about homosex ua ty and the openness and ack o b as mpressed me cannot mag ne anyone choos ng o the r own ree w and n good consc ence to embrace a esty e that br ngs upon them se ves so much su er ng one ness a enat on and condemnat on rom soc ety to the extent that they must h de what they are t s very sad that we whom God has made h s own saved and or g ven take over h s prerogat ve o stand ng n udgment and condem nat on over others who are not ke us who are d erent born d er ent and there ore unacceptab e contrary to esus exp c t nstruc t on “Do not udge ” Mt 7 1 15 Th s s n u ug ness s pervas ve and nds express on n mu t tudes o perce ved d erences based on the prem se “ you are d erent rom me then you are n er or ess o a person d sordered the word t se carr es the connotat on o cu pab ty ncorr g b y s n u etc n my super or and e evated op n on ” esus parab e o the r ghteous man and the s nner Lk 18 9 14 ap p es n th s Year o Mercy may God have mercy on us Lord we beg or org veness Hanus a Annanda e Germ ston

PERSPECTIVES

Happy to be unpopular O NE of the essential parts of the job of a parish priest is to be unpopular sometimes.

I don’t ever remember, growing up, our parish priests ever being unpopular. But then there were always stories, those whispered confidences between parents that we as children ignored or weren’t privy to.

Being unpopular is a skill that is acquired with experience. At first minting, as a priest you really do try to be all things to all people. But with wisdom, experience and failure you realise that sometimes the Gospel and the Church are served by putting your foot down with a heavy, charitable hand.

My mother used to say—maybe she still does—that I wasn’t happy unless there was a war to fight. Maybe that’s true. Recently, I have taken issue with bling weddings and private baptism.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments recently changed the wording of the welcome of children at the beginning of the Rite of Baptism from “the Christian Community welcomes you” to “the Church of God welcomes you”. This may seem insignificant, but I’m getting to see the value of this re-emphasis that it is the Church who is both the guardian and dispenser of the sacraments.

Just as recent years have seen the growth of the “wedding venue” trade, the logical consequence of the dissociation and privatisation of the sacraments is the growth of boutique baptisms.

Our princesses and princelings are way too important to be baptised with other children. They must have their own baptism ceremony, preferably in a photogenic venue.

We begin thereby a process where the community that is the Church is functionally excluded.

I fear that these boutique children will never really attend catechism or grow up as part of the believing and worshipping community. The Church will never be their home when it’s seen as a service provider, not a support.

The selfish generation (or is it the selfie generation?) which shows a defiance to anything that does not make the world revolve around them can see no point or relevance in a community of struggling and messy believers. The sacraments are stripped of their power and efficacy as moments of grace and privileged encounter with Christ in favour of the Dress and the Hair and photo moments.

R

ecently, at a funeral service, a bling, boutique undertaker asked me to step aside from my customary place at the head of the grave as I was “in the way of the doves”.

Generally one doesn’t like to cause too many disputes at a funeral, especially as graves are now way more than six feet deep, so I stepped aside—only to have the undertaker bang her terrified “rats with wings” out of their cage and shoo them

The only proper place for a wedding is in the church, writes Fr Chris Townsend, or we risk privatising our sacraments.

Fr Chris Townsend

Pastor’s Notebook

along, accompanied by a sermon-like explanation that this was the spirit leaving the body of the deceased.

Well, my dear… Your pagan auguries aside, this is just not what the Church teaches. But because it’s pretty and gimmicky, it’s lapped up—all at additional cost.

One of the new trends at weddings is to have animals bring up the rings. It’s all very cutesy—until the dogs have a proverbial dogfight while still carrying the rather expensive rings.

Of course, the cheetah that came down the aisle left a dilemma. I wasn’t putting my hands near a large, lithe cat that was purring like a Harley Davidson.

Nor was anyone else. After all, the cheetah was coaxed down the aisle by pieces of chicken being tossed in front of it.

Granny quickly shielded the very pretty flower girl for fear that the child be stalked.

And there ended the liturgy and prayer— but, of course, without any sudden moves.

This Catholic ceremony might as well have been a Home Affairs wedding service as the prayer element was lost to the wow factor.

So when you phone up and we respond to your request to include boutique affectations with large doses of mirth alternating with forehead-slapping, please understand that this is the Church of God. Sacraments are celebrated in the parish church. Stick to the form that has been the same for a few hundred years and more.

Is it, measured against your bling ceremony, boring? Absolutely. Memorable?

Probably not. But we’re part of a worshipping community and we privatise our practice and sacraments to selfishness at our own peril.

Feeding children secures our future Judith Turner I LOVE children! I love their eagerness to know things. I love their curiosity. I love their innocence when answering questions or making observations.

Children are open and curious. They are like sponges when it comes to taking in information, especially information that interests them.

Children are much more daring than adults. They like to try new things and they do not always see the dangers that certain situations bring. They have energy.

They run and jump and hop and show their excitement and happiness. And they want you to do the same.

Although I cannot keep up with their energies, I always enjoy being around them. Children do not ask much from the world. They do not require much. They need their basic needs of love, food, clothing and shelter fulfilled. Given these things, they will blossom beyond measure.

Yet, 3,3 million children in South Africa live in households where they go hungry.

Nutrition is particularly important for children because they are still growing and developing. A lack of nutritious food with all the essential micronutrients can result in a child’s normal development being impaired, resulting in ill health, disability, inability to benefit from educational opportunities, or even death.

A lack of food makes children extremely vulnerable and prone to suffering.

Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to these children.

Parents and families have the primary duty to make sure that their children have food. The government has a duty to support parents in feeding their children if they are unable to do so. And we, as people of faith, also have a duty to protect and look after the children.

Retirement Home, Rivonia, Johannesburg Tel:011 803 1451 www.lourdeshouse.org

Faith and Life

“Nutrition is particularly important for children because they are still growing and developing. A lack of nutritious food with all the essential micronutrients can result in a child’s normal development being impaired, resulting in ill health, disability, inability to benefit from educational opportunities, or even death. “ One day, this is what we will have to account for. The one test of our faith would be for us to answer how the vulnerable fared while we were alive.

There are many organisations, inside and outside the Church, which care for vulnerable children. These organisations

Frail/assisted care in shared or single rooms.

Independent care in single/double rooms with en-suite bathrooms.

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depend on our support. They depend on our awareness and concern towards children. In supporting these organisations we show our care towards the vulnerable child and we are putting our faith into action.

The St Kizito’s Children’s Programme has an outreach to vulnerable children. If you have an organisation like that in your parish, either join it or make a donation towards its work.

Many St Vincent De Paul organisations also reach out to vulnerable children; join the SVP or make a donation towards their work.

If no such organisation exists in your parish, then look around in your neighbourhood for other organisations, go to the nearest farm where children are also suffering from a lack of food, read in your local newspaper and follow up on stories of vulnerable children where you can get involved. Or, start an outreach to vulnerable children in your parish!

Our future depends on the children of our country. How we look after our children today will be reflected in what our society will look like in future.

I look forward to a future where children have all their basic needs met; a future where children show an eagerness to know things, where they are open and curious, where they have energy and want to learn. A future where children run and hop and skip and show their excitement because of happy lives and full tummies.

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

7

Siphesihle Manci

Point of Leadership

What I’ve learnt from leading

T

HE Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu taught us more than 2 500 years ago: “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

This had application when I served as a coordinator at St Francis Xavier Orientation Seminary in Cape Town.

The job description I was given by the seminary explained that the coordinator “keeps discipline, animates and encourages the brothers on his corridor. He cares for them when they are sick, helping Fr Hugh as an infirmarian”.

At St Francis Xavier the seminarians are divided into two equal groups. Those groups are called formation groups. Each formation group has a group coordinator.

This is for the seminarians’ benefit because it is easier to form people in a smaller group than in one large group.

I interpreted being a coordinator as “journeying with seminarians, step by step, in good and bad times and also being a mediator between seminarians and the formators”.

Being a coordinator didn’t make me more than other seminarians, but it made me less because if you want to serve other people well, you must make yourself less than them.

This opening quote from Lao Tzu is what inspired me as a group coordinator. I took it as my motto. It made me take a decision to try and lead not from the front but rather from the back.

If you are leading from the back, it is easier to see when people in front of you are going astray or when things ahead are getting tough. Then you help where you possibly can before returning to the back and let people continue going forward.

If you are leading from behind, people do not really see you but they see things going well. They also see problems coming, they try facing those problems. This is when the leader comes to assist, but all of a sudden they realise that those problems have been solved and then they say: “We did it ourselves.” In that way the leader’s work is done: the problem is solved, his aim is fulfilled and the people he is leading will say, as Lao Tzu wants them to, “we did it ourselves.”

Leading from the back allows people to grow.

Letting people face challenges helps them grow. I believe this is one of the best leadership styles that one can use, especially in a seminary.

The seminary forms us as future priests. As priests we will encounter challenges, but what we have learnt in the seminary will then come into play and help us face these problems.

To me, being a coordinator is another dimension of formation. If used well, that position helps the coordinator to grow and be formed to be a leader in future—and priests are expected to be good leaders to truly be able to shepherd the people of God. n Siphesihle Manci is a seminarian from the archdiocese of Durban.

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8

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

COMMUNITY

The Catholic Women’s League of St Anne’s parish in Belgravia, Johannesburg, hosted a farewell for Holy Cross Sister Mary Charles, an active member of the parish for 22 years. A thanksgiving Mass was concelebrated by past parish priest Fr Ronnie Houreld and current priest Fr Letsie Moshoeshoe. Sr Mary Charles, pictured with Sr Mechtildis Wilking and provincial superior Sr Justina Priess, is retiring to Lady Selbourne home in Pretoria.

Sacred Heart parish in Mangethe, diocese of Eshowe, held a Mass in honour of the late Magdalene Mzobe, principal of Whebede Primary School. The Mass was celebated by Fr Bongani Xulu (inset). Mrs Mzobe, mother of nine children, was remembered for her commitment to the upliftment of her pupils during apartheid.

Fransalian Fathers Baiju Mundackal (right) and Benjamin Ngade of Grassy Park parish in Cape Town celebrated their 15- and 8-year anniversaries of ordination respectively.

The Assisi Mission in the archdiocese of Bloemfontein celebrated jubilees for the Franciscan Sisters of Siessen. Srs Mary-Anne Mosese and Maria-Gertrude celebrated their 60-year jubilee, Sr Maria-Julia Monethi her 50-year jubilee, Srs Maria-Sylvia Smous and Maria Ottilia Khoele their 40-year jubilees and two first professions, Srs Marie-Gabriella and Mery-Joseph. Bishop Abel Gabuza of Kimberley was the main celebrant, accompanied by priests from different parts of South Africa.

Missionaries of Africa Father Serge Boroto Zihalirwa was ordained in Bakavu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Fr Anstey Lawrence Kay OFM Cap was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Stephen Brislin at Immaculate Conception parish in Parow, Cape Town.

Deacon Lerato Aaron Mokoena (right) was ordained by Bishop Jan de Groef in the diocese of Bethlehem .

Branch members of the Catholic Womens League in Maryvale, Johannesburg, each sponsored a child at the Missionaries of Charity Mother Teresa Home for children in Bellevue East.

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

CHURCH

9

Gay Catholics: What we want in the Church

In our edition of January 13 we encouraged a fresh dialogue on the question of pastoral care for homosexuals. Members of the Holy Trinity LGBTI group at Braamfontein parish in Johannesburg—Dumisani Dube, Sylvester Ezenagu, Tino Jera and Ricus Dullaert have responded with this perspective.

H

OLY Trinity Catholic church in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, has been trying for a long time to be an inclusive parish.

The clergy and parish council have tried to help people live Catholic teaching even though they struggle with their faith.

The doctrines in the Catechism are beautiful but many don’t help people in daily life. How can the Church approach people, pastorally, who are seriously trying to search for God and the meaning of life in the Church? These are people who can’t be dishonest and yet don’t fulfil all the “standards” as far as marriage and sexuality are concerned.

To make a gesture of welcome Holy Trinity Parish agreed to start an LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex) group in the parish. This group was established in 2010 and today has 20 regular members, mainly refugees from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo and Pakistan, and also South Africans.

In this group the members are encouraged to share their life experience and how they integrate being Christian with their sexual orientation. The group experiences homophobia and often members have to hide their sexual orientation from their family because their relatives disown them when they admit they are homosexual.

Police, government officials, employers and so on abuse them in their country of origin. For many members it is a long road to accept themselves as homosexuals and to understand that being gay is not a perversion, it is something they haven’t chosen and yet have to live with.

Parishioners hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer at Mass. The LGBTI group from Holy Trinity parish in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, says that it has been a long road to accept themselves as homosexuals and to understand that being gay is not a perversion or something they have chosen. (Photo: Sarah Webb/CNS) The first aim of the LGBTI group is to help people accept and love themselves as homosexual persons, made in the image and likeness of God—rooted in the book of Genesis.

This is foundational to Christian belief: the inviolable nature of human life. Homosexual people too share in the image of God. The second aim is to show that homosexual people can be Catholic.

Being gay does not mean you are excluded from the Church.

The parish offers prayers for our members, asks them to be visible by being represented on the parish council, and invites them to participate in parish life, for example by leading the Way of the Cross during Lent.

Our members are invited to meetings when we discuss questions of family life. The contact person of our group is visible in the weekly bulletin.

All this has done a lot to make homosexual people more visible and

accepted in our parish. But the battle is far from won. In a recent parish survey some parishioners questioned why there is an LGBTI group in our parish because this is “against the teachings of the Church”. People who hold this view, we argue, reveal that they do not know Catholic teaching and are ill informed.

We applaud the efforts of The Southern Cross to encourage discussion about the relationship between homosexuality and Catholic faith.

But we also are concerned about some of the statements on this topic made in the edition of January 13, which included an editorial on the topic, an article by an anonymous priest, an interview with gay Catholic blogger Joseph Prever, and an excerpt from the Catechism.

We admire Mr Prever for being such a good Catholic and being able to live a celibate/chaste live. But we also see around us that only a very, very small number of Catholics— heterosexual and homosexual—are

able to make the choice Joseph has made.

We find it dangerous to present Joseph—on the front page and in the article—as “the” model. Like it or not, most heterosexuals and homosexuals want to live in a committed and loving relationship, which includes physical expression.

W

e would like the Church to rethink its theology of sexuality.

The existing ways of thinking, as noted in the editorial and demonstrated in the excerpt from the Catechism, are totally outdated.

Hardly anyone can live being “accepted” as a homosexual person and, on the other hand, being forced to lead a life without the physical expression of love. Celibacy is admirable but it is not for everyone.

The Catechism needs to take into account the actual circumstances of people’s lives. As the anonymous priest writes: “Remember Galileo!

Once his ideas were condemned by

the pope and bishops and later he turned out to be right.”

We are encouraged by the writings of a priest. He explains that the condemnation of homosexuality has no biblical grounds. He understands the risks of discriminatory language, like “disorder”, for the self-esteem of homosexual people, and he knows that homosexual people have a higher risk of suicide or living a life of desperate promiscuity simply because they are not accepted by their families, Church and society.

This priest calls for viewing the love between homosexuals in a committed love relationship as being of Divine Origin. We would argue that this includes the physicality of the relationship.

Responding to the call for a new dialogue on the subject, we suggest the following: • We encourage parishes to set up LGBTI support groups, if parish members see the need for it.

• We call for the local Church to create an environment where LGBTI persons feel welcome and appreciated. According to statistics 10% of the human population (and by analogy one would assume a similar percentage of Catholics) are LGBTI. They deserve to find a home in the Church.

• The Church is losing large numbers of Catholics, partly as a result of its teachings on sexual morality.

There is a gap between the lived reality and the defined morality of the Church in all areas. The Church must face this crisis.

• We plead for a Church that blesses not only rosaries, cars, bikes, boats, medals, palm branches and domestic animals on St Francis’ feast day. The Church should also acknowledge committed same-sex partnership. “Where friendship is and love, there is God.” • As homosexual Catholics we don’t expect our relationships to be regarded as marriage. We, however, desire that our committed relationships be recognised as a way of loving by the Church. n For more information on Holy Trinity’s LGBTI group contact Dumisani Dube at dumie72@gmail.com

Become an Associate - Your contribution makes a difference The Associates Campaign is an integral support to The Southern Cross ensuring that it continues its apostolic outreach, developing the means of transmitting our Catholic values in the new forms of media and safeguarding its future in these uncertain economic times.

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• Support our apostolate to prisoners to help them convert to a life with Christ. As St Paul admonishes us: “Keep in mind those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them… since you too are in the one body” (Heb 13:3). Our outreach currently serves 24 prisons as well as six army bases; it is funded entirely by the Associates Campaign.

• Ensure that all our seminarians may have access to The Southern Cross so that they remain in touch with the events and thinking of the local and worldwide Church.

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10

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

TRAVEL

Magical Krakow offers treat for WYD pilgrims The host city for World Youth Day 2016 holds many attractions for pilgrims, besides its close link with St John Paul II. NANCY WIECHEC guides us through the city.

G

UIDE Ewa Basiura grasped a heavy iron cuff chained to the side of St Mary’s basilica.

“Any idea what this was used for?” she asked her tour group. No one ventured an answer.

This is where wayward Catholics were shackled on Sundays to shame them for their infidelities, she said.

“Of course, these are not used anymore,” she added. “If they were, we’d need a lot more.”

Rynek Glowny, Krakow’s main square, with its majestic basilica and medieval curiosities, is the heart of Krakow, the enchanting former royal capital of Poland.

Pope Francis, invoking Krakow’s “two great apostles of mercy”, called on the world’s young people to join him here for World Youth Day from July 25-31 (in May The Southern Cross pilgrimage to Poland, led by Bishop Stanilaw Dziuba, will include Krakow).

“The city of St John Paul II and St Faustina Kowalska is waiting for us with open arms and hearts,” he said in a letter released last August.

Organisers are expecting up to 2,5 million people for the international Catholic festival in July.

The city is so popular with travellers that it ranked in the Condé

Left: People walk through the market centre in Krakow’s main square in Poland. Right: The gothic St Mary’s basilica anchors the city’s main square. Krakow, once the royal capital of Poland, will host the international World Youth Day in July. (All photos: Nancy Wiechec/CNS) Nast traveller guides readers’ choice of the top 25 cities in the world a couple of years ago, ahead of popular tourist destinations such as Sydney, Venice, Paris, Seville and Barcelona (that year Cape Town came 11th).

With many Catholic points of interest and its strong connection to the life of St John Paul, Krakow and its environs remain a top pilgrim destination as well.

“Krakow is historic, atmospheric, romantic, friendly and charming,” said guide Ewa Basiura, who is also a doctor of philosophy.

“There’s always something interesting to see and do.”

The gothic St Mary’s basilica anchors the main square, the largest in Europe. The church is dedicated to the assumption of Mary—which

is also South Africa’s patronal feast.

Its most cherished work of art, a wooden and gilded altarpiece by German sculptor Veit Stoss, depicts Mary’s dormition and assumption into heaven. Outside, situated between the basilica’s massive towers, a digital clock counts down to the opening of World Youth Day. At the centre of the square is Cloth Hall, a medieval market filled with vendors offering Polish handicrafts, art, clothing and jewellery. Religious goods, including renditions of Poland’s patroness, Our Lady of Czestochowa, and amber rosaries can be found there.

A

draw for students, Krakow is home to 12 public universities.

Jagiellonian University, founded in 1364 by King Casimir the Great, is

its oldest and most prestigious.

Jagiellonian boasts several celebrated scientists and literary giants as alumni. A few of its most famous are Nicolaus Copernicus, St John Paul and Nobel Prize winners Ivo Andric and Wislawa Szymborska.

Karol Wojtyla, later St John Paul, spent nearly four decades in Krakow and was its archbishop from 1964 until his election as pope in 1978. Statues and images of him appear throughout Krakow, including on Wawel Hill, the city’s birthplace and treasured landmark.

In 1946, newly ordained Fr Wojtyla celebrated his first Mass in the crypt of St Leonard below Wawel cathedral. Later, he was installed archbishop at the cathedral, which is dedicated to Ss Stanislaus and Wenceslas. Memorabilia related to

St John Paul are displayed in the cathedral’s museum.

Located south of the city centre is the immense modern Divine Mercy Sanctuary, dedicated to the devotion promulgated by St Faustina and advanced by John Paul II. Pope Francis is to lead the Way of the Cross from the sanctuary during World Youth Day. In 2002, St John Paul blessed the new sanctuary at the site where St Faustina died. It had personal meaning to him, he said during the dedication. It was the place he would stop to pray while working at a nearby factory during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

The two-storey sanctuary, constructed in the shape of a ship with a capacity for 5 000 worshippers, is set apart from the city’s historic churches.

Two of Krakow’s most visited churches are Ss Peter & Paul and St Andrew’s, located adjacent to one another along Grodzka Street, just off the Main Square.

Baroque statues of the apostles greet tourists and worshippers as they enter the gates of Ss Peter & Paul, built for the Society of Jesus in the 17th century. Fr Piotr Skarga, a Jesuit preacher and writer, court chaplain and top figure in the Counter-Reformation, is buried there.

The stone Romanesque St Andrew’s is nearly 900 years old. The residents of its convent of Poor Clares have been offering prayers unceasingly since the 14th century.

The locals have a simple phrase that expresses the city’s appeal: “Magiczny Krakow”—meaning magical Krakow!—CNS

7-21 MAY 2015

ST JOHN PAUL II PILGRIMAGE TO POLAND 13 to 21 May 2016

Wadowice basilica

A woman sells obwarzanek krakowski, a kind of pretzel, on a Krakow street.

What to eat in Krakow St Mary’s Cathedral, Krakow

Led by Bishop Stanislaw Dziuba Pilgrimage Highlights

• Explore Krakow, the city of St John Paul’s student and priestly life, just two months before World Youth Day. • Wadowice, St John Paul’s birthplace, on his birthday!

• Czechostowa with Black Madonna • Divine Mercy Sanctuary with the tomb of St Faustina and the original painting of the Divine Mercy image • Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, with the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Calvary • Niepokalanow, the Franciscan monastery of St Maximilian Kolbe • Mass in a chapel carved out of rock in the Wieliczka Salt Mine • Zakopane, with wooden chapel of Our Lady of Fatima

Black Madonna

St Faustina’s tomb

For more information or to book, please contact Gail info@fowlertours.co.za or 076 352-3809

www.fowlertours.co.za

I

N advance of World Youth Day in July, US food writer Mike Sula offers a guide to some bargain treats found in Krakow and elsewhere.

OBWARZANEK KRAKOWSKI: The bakers of Krakow have been producing this cousin to the bagel for nearly 600 years. Sold all over the city from mobile kiosks, its chewy, dense, and subtly sweet dough is formed into a ring large enough to put a fist through. It’s boiled, then baked and topped with poppy seeds, salt, onions, and/or sesame seeds.

KREMOWKA PAPIESKA (Papal Cream Cake): When St John Paul II visited his hometown, Wadowice, in 1999, he waxed nostalgic about the sweet cream cakes he and his schoolmates pooled their money to purchase from a baker on the town square. Almost overnight bakeries across the country began turning out the sheets of puff pastry or short cake, sandwiching a thick layer of rich custard, dusted with confectioner’s sugar.

DONER KEBAB: This uniquely Turkish-German street-food fusion arrived in Poland in the early part of this century, spreading across the country and taking on a local character. Beef, chicken, or sometimes pork is shaved from a vertical spit onto grilled flatbread, heavily garnished with lettuce, tomato, corn, red cabbage and mayonnaise.

PIEROGI: Considered a national

dish of Poland, these half-moon shaped dumplings come in savoury or sweet varieties. Traditional savoury fillings include minced meat, cheese, sauerkraut or wild mushroom. Pierogi ruskie are filled with a potato, cheese and onion mixture. Krakow hosts an annual weeklong pierogi festival in August.

ZAPIEKANKA: A toasted halfsandwich roll topped with melted cheese, sauteed mushrooms and ketchup, this communist-era answer to the West’s pizza was a cheap, omnipresent street food that fell out of favour when Poland shifted to a market economy. Today it’s making a comeback with a better quality and seemingly infinite variety of possible toppings.

BAR MLECZNY (aka “milk bar”): Not an individual food, but barebones cafeterias serving dairy products and inexpensive, hearty, freshly made traditional Polish food like pierogi, kluski, cutlets, and a variety of soups.

After World War II, the government subsidised milk bars as places where workers could eat cheaply.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall their numbers dwindled but today, cresting on a wave of nostalgia, they’ve taken on a measure of retro chic. As ever, they remain popular with students. Expect ample portions and unsentimental service.—CNS

CLASSIFIEDS Sr Cosma Gräf OP

O

AKFORD Dominican Sister Cosma Gräf died at the age of 101 on January 6 at Villa Assumpta in Pietermaritzburg.

Born Anna Carolina Gräf on October 25, 1914 in the village of Ottendorf, Germany, she was the third child of George and Anna Gräf. Her father was killed in World War I, three weeks after her birth.

Anna completed ten years of basic schooling in the village school, then took a two-year course in domestic science at the Franciscan convent at Dillingen in Germany’s Swabia region.

She entered the Oakford Dominican congregation on February 1, 1933 and made temporal vows on July 1, 1935 in Neustadt on the Main.

She arrived in Southern Africa on September 17, 1935, and was first assigned to the order’s convent in Bremersdorp, now Manzini in Swaziland.

She was a young, energetic and determined sister, and became a true missionary.

The area was poor, education

was available only for boys, and the girls were neglected, considered good enough only for becoming one of the wives in a polygamous marriage and bearing children. So Sr Cosma set out on foot to convert the men and convince them of the benefit of having the girls educated.

When eventually she was successful, she started to collect the girls under a tree—the founda-

tion of St Theresa’s High School years later.

In 1961 Sr Cosma became novice mistress to young African girls at Oakford.

She was a woman of strong faith and strict in her discipline.

She not only taught the Gospel values from the book but practised herself what she preached.

Her next mission was parish work in the outstations of the parish at Oakford and later on at Shaka’s Kraal and Hambanati.

Sr Cosma had a special passion for the rosary, which she taught to many people.

She retired to Villa Assumpta, the senior home for the Oakford Sisters, in 2003.

During these years Sr Cosma grew from an ascetic person to a happy and mellow person. Her spirituality changed into enjoying God’s love for her and being grateful for all that was done for her.

In October 2014 she celebrated her 100th birthday, an event marked with an article in The Southern Cross.

Carmen Brokamp OP

Sr Dominic-Mary Fourie OP

O

AKFORD Dominican Sister Dominic-Marie Fourie died on December 29 at the age of 87.

Born Johanna Fourie, she was the twin sister of fellow Dominican Sister Mannes.

They were born on March 3, 1928 in Pretoria to Emma Fourie (née Delport) and Stephen Peter Fourie. Their mother died in childbirth when the twins were just two years old.

Johanna attended Sunnyside Primary School until going to a Dutch Reformed boarding school in Heidelberg at the age of 11.

She completed her senior education at a commercial college in Johannesburg and then worked for seven years in various offices.

At the age of 19 she and her sister lived at Mazenod Hostel; this was her first contact with Catholicism and the Oakford Sisters.

In June 1953 both twins entered the Oakford Dominican congregation and at her reception on April 30, 1954, Johanna

received the name Sr DominicMary.

She made her first profession on July 14, 1955, and her final profession on July 16, 1958.

Sr Dominic-Mary was sent for training in general nursing at St Augustine’s in Durban. She did her midwifery at Glen Grey Mission Hospital in the Transkei, passing her midwifery with dis-

Liturgical Calendar Year C – Weekdays Cycle Year 2 Sunday February 14, 1st Sunday of Lent Deuteronomy 26:4-10, Psalms 91:1-2, 10-15, Romans 10:8-13, Luke 4:1-13 Monday February 15 Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18, Psalms 19:8-10, 15, Matthew 25:31-46 Tuesday February 16 Isaiah 55:10-11, Psalms 34:4-7, 16-19, Matthew 6:7-15 Wednesday February 17, Seven Founders of the Order of Servites Jonah 3:1-10, Psalms 51:3-4, 12-13, 18-19, Luke 11:29-32 Thursday February 18 Esther 14: 1.3-4,11,3-14, Psalms 138:1-3, 7-8, Matthew 7:7-12 Friday February 19 Ezekiel 18:21-28, Psalms 130:1-8, Matthew 5:2026 Saturday February 20 Deuteronomy 26:16-19, Psalms 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8 Matthew 5:43-48 Sunday February 21, 2nd Sunday of Lent Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18, Psalms 27:1, 7-9, 13-14, Philippians 3:17--4:1, Luke 9:28-36

tinction in 1963. At the Catholic Nurses’ Congress in 1964 she was presented with a gold medal for this achievement.

For many years she assisted mothers during their time of birth at Marymount, Johannesburg, and Marifont in Pretoria.

From 1979 she worked at her order’s Oakford Infirmary and later Villa Siena where she tirelessly gave herself in looking after elderly people and our Sisters.

Sr Dominic-Mary was a very caring and warm person and made many friends.

It was only in the last few years that Sr Dominic-Mary began to suffer from Alzheimer’s.

In 2015 she and her sister celebrated their diamond jubilee of profession and this was reported in the local Pietermaritzburg newspaper.

The result of this was that they were among about 50 people to receive the Indondo Award for service to the community in KwaZulu-Natal in August 2015.

Carmen Brokamp OP

Southern CrossWord solutions SOLUTIONS TO 693. ACROSS: 1 Calf, 3 Ave Maria, 7 Thieves, 9 Cameo, 10 Youngster, 12 Months, 14 Spread, 16 Ayatollah, 19 Cache, 20 Instant, 21 Ordinand, 22 Thor. DOWN: 1 Catacomb, 2 Laity, 4 Visage, 5 Remorse, 6 Ahoy, 8 Vouchsafe, 9 Catapults, 11 Educator, 13 Nuanced, 15 Motion, 17 Heath, 18 Echo.

Our bishops’ anniversaries This week we congratulate: February 14: Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg on his 72nd birthday February 19: Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria on the 22nd anniversary of his episcopal ordination February 20: Bishop Zolile Peter Mpambani of Kokstad on his 59th birthday

Word of the Week

Catechetics: From the Greek meaning “to sound forth,” it is the procedure for teaching religion.

Dispensation: An exemption from Church law.

The Southern Cross, February 10 to February 16, 2016

CLASSIFIEDS

11

Births • First Communion • Confirmation • Engagement/Marriage • Wedding anniversary • Ordination jubilee • Congratulations • Deaths • In memoriam • Thanks • Prayers • Accommodation • Holiday Accommodation • Personal • Services • Employment • Property • Others Please include payment (R1,60 a word) with small advertisements for promptest publication.

PRAYERS

HOLY ST JUDE, apostle and martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke you, special patron in time of need. To you I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg you to come to my assistance. Help me now in my urgent need and grant my petitions. In return I promise to make your name known and publish this prayer. Amen.

Thank you, Holy St Jude for answering my prayers; forever grateful. Amen.

Julie P. O GREAT ST JOSEPH OF CUPERTINO, who by your prayers obtained from God the grace of being asked at your examinations the only questions which you knew, obtain for me a like success in the examinations for which I am now preparing and in return I promise to make your name known and caused to be invoked in prayers. Amen. Pam Walsh.

O VIRGIN Mother, In the depths of your heart you pondered the life of the Son you brought into the world. Give us your vision of Jesus and ask the Father to open our hearts, that we may always see

His presence in our lives, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, bring us into the joy and peace of the kingdom, where Jesus is Lord forever and ever.

Amen.

ALMIGHTY eternal God, source of all compassion, the promise of your mercy and saving help fills our hearts with hope. Hear the cries of the people of Syria; bring healing to those suffering from the violence, and comfort to those mourning the dead. Empower and encourage Syria’s neighbours in their care and welcome for refugees. Convert the hearts of those who have taken up arms, and strengthen the resolve of those committed to peace. O God of hope and Father of mercy, your Holy Spirit inspires us to look beyond ourselves and our own needs. Inspire leaders to choose peace over violence and to seek reconciliation with enemies. Inspire the Church around the world with compassion for the people of Syria, and fill us with hope for a future of peace built on justice for all. We ask this through Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace and Light of the World, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen. Prayer courtesy of the USCCB.

PERSONAL

ABORTION IS MURDER: Silence on this issue is not golden, it’s yellow! Avoid pro-abortion politicians.

ABORTION WARNING: The truth will convict a silent Church. See www. valuelifeabortionisevil. co.za EWTN: See and hear more about the Catholic faith.

Decoder and dish for sale.

Johannesburg area.

R2500. Scaling down for retirement. Helen 079 508 5874.

VISIT PIOUS KINTU’S official website http://ave maria832.simplesite.com This website has been set up to give glory to the Most

Community Calendar To place your event, call Mary Leveson at 021 465 5007 or e-mail m.leveson@scross.co.za (publication subject to space)

CAPE TOWN: Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. Mass on last Saturday of every month at 9:30 at Sacred Heart church in Somerset Road, Cape Town. Followed by vigil at Marie Stopes abortion clinic in Bree Street.

Contact Colette Thomas on 083 412 4836 or 021 593 9875 or Br Daniel SCP on 078 739 2988.

DURBAN: Holy Mass and Novena to St Anthony at St Anthony’s parish every Tuesday at 9am. Holy Mass and Divine Mercy

Devotion at 17:30pm on first Friday of every month. Sunday Mass at 9am. 031 309 3496.

9018 or 031 209 2536.

Overport rosary group.

At Emakhosini Hotel, 73 East Street every Wednesday at 6.30 pm.

Contact Keith at 083 372 NELSPRUIT: Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at St Peter’s parish every Tuesday from 8:00 to 16:45, followed by Rosary, Divine Mercy prayers, then a Mass/Communion service at 17:30pm.

Holy Trinity through the healing power of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

View amazing pictures of Pious Kintu's work in Congo and various African countries since 2007. Also read about African Stigmatist Reverend Sister Josephine Sul and Padre Pio among others.

DECEASED CATHOLIC PRIEST HAS LEFT BEHIND VOLUMES OF COINS, STAMPS AND TINKA TOYS NEEDING VALUATION AND NOW FOR SALE TO AID POOR MISSIONS. PLEASE RESPOND TO THE SOUTHERN CROSS. 021 465 5007.

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

LONDON: Protea House.

Single ₤30(R540), twin ₤45(R810) per/night. Selfcatering, busses and underground nearby. Phone Peter 0044 208 7484834.

KNYSNA: Self-catering accommodation for 2 in Old Belvidere, with DStv and wonderful lagoon views.

044 387 1052.

MARIANELLA Guest House, Simon’s Town: “Come experience the peace and beauty of God with us.” Fully equipped with amazing sea views.

Secure parking, ideal for rest and relaxation. Special rates for pensioners and clergy. Malcolm Salida 082 784 5675, mjsalida@ gmail.com SOUTH COAST: Uvongo.

Holiday flat, full security, belinda@kmchurch.za.org

TO LET

MORNINGSIDE: Sandton.

Furnished apartment, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1 lounge/dining room, 1 TV lounge with large patio, 2 undercover parkings.

Rental R12 000, one-year lease. 083 455 0445.

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the

2nd Sunday in Lent: February 14 Readings: Genesis 15:5-12, Psalm 27:1, 7-9, 13-14, Philippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 9:28-36

N

S outher n C ross

Our God is a faithful God

EXT Sunday is the second Sunday of our Lenten journey, and what we need above all is not to renew that resolution to avoid chocolate, but an increasing certainty about the faithfulness of God, and of Jesus, that will be spectacularly vindicated when Lent comes to its glorious end.

In the first reading, Abram has just been rather grumpily questioning God about his lack of offspring; so God simply tells him: “Count the stars, if you are able to, and just so will your progeny be.”

Remarkably, we are told that Abram “put his faith in the Lord, and he credited it to him as an act of righteousness”. Then God reminds him of what has already been done for him, which still leaves Abram questioning: “How shall I know that I shall inherit [the land]?”

So God dramatically makes a covenant with Abram, with a sacrifice and slaughtered birds and deep darkness, and the promise: “I shall give you this land, from the River of Egypt as far as the Great River.”

The psalm for next Sunday clearly believes in precisely that God: “The Lord is my light

and my salvation—of whom am I to be afraid?” the poet robustly begins, before going on to ask, not quite as grumpily as Abram in the first reading: “Lord , hear my voice; I call upon you. Have mercy and answer me”, and he insists on his fidelity: “I am looking for your face, Lord; do not hide your face”, and expresses unshakable confidence: “I have faith that I shall look upon the Lord’s goodness, in the land of the living.” There is the invitation to us at this stage of Lent.

In the second reading, Paul is working out the implications of this fidelity, painfully aware (“I say it now weeping”) that there are “enemies of the cross of Christ…whose God is their belly and glory in their shame”.

Then he uses the language of the Roman empire that has put him in prison, when he speaks of “our citizenship in heaven” and of “waiting for a Saviour” (those who had Roman citizenship thought the Emperor was their Saviour), and that is where his fidelity must lie.

So the reading concludes with an exhortation to “stand firm in the Lord, beloved”.

The gospel on this second Sunday of Lent is always the lovely story of the Transfiguration, this year in Luke’s version; and it is entirely characteristic of Luke that the evangelist twice speaks of Jesus at prayer as the setting for this remarkable event.

As in the accounts given by Mark and Matthew, Jesus takes Peter and James and John, his “inner cabinet” with him up the mountain, and then “the appearance of his face became different when he prayed”.

Then, as Jesus’ clothes turn a brilliant white, Luke allows us to see that there are “two men chatting with him, who were Moses and Elijah”. These two, of course, represent that part of Israel’s ancient tradition that had intimate experience of God, Moses at the burning bush, and Elijah all through his life, and these two “seen in glory, were speaking of [Jesus’] exodus, which he was about to fulfil in Jerusalem”.

The way Luke phrases it reminds us that Jesus will die at the end of our Lenten journey, but his use of the word “fulfil” under-

Wearing a shirt of flame T

side the soul of a saint, inside someone who could seemingly give up everything for God—the same fiery desires that she feels within her own soul.

And King recognises too that those fires can both purify or destroy, redeem or torment, turn someone into a great saint or a great sinner.

So she lets Thérèse’s fire shed light on her own fires. And since what is most personal and private inside us, if revealed, is also the most universal, by revealing her own deep, private struggles, her book sheds light on the universal human struggle.

T

he book is self-revealing but never exhibitionist, a tricky formula that King handles well.

For example, she draws on a famous incident in Thérèse’s life when as a little girl, asked by her older sister who presented her with a velvet sewing-basket full of coloured balls to pick one thing from the basket, Thérèse said: “I choose all!” and took the entire basket and walked away.

King reflects upon her own struggle to, as Kierkegaard said, “will the one thing”.

Here’s the parallel she draws to her own life: “‘I choose all!’ said Thérèse, and the further I progressed, the more I saw that the human dilemma is to want it all. I wanted to be celibate, and I wanted wantonly to give myself to a spouse, I wanted dark secrets, noise, lights, mania, and the stimu-

Conrad

HEY say that the book you most need to read finds you when you most need to read it. I’ve had that experience many times, most recently with Heather King’s book, Shirt of Flame, A Year with Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

The title of the book is borrowed from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, where he famously suggests that Love itself, God, is behind the torment we often feel in our fiery desires and that the burning we feel there is an “intolerable shirt of flame”.

Heather King, who was recently featured in The Southern Cross of (December 30), writes this book from a fiery context within her own life.

She is a freelance journalist and writer, single, divorced, an alcoholic in recovery, reconciling some darkness in her past, dealing with a paralysing obsession because the man she is in love with will not respond to her, risking the financial stability of a career in law for the insecurity of being a freelance writer, and struggling with the sense of being an outsider to normal family, marriage, and community, an orphan at all the banquets of life.

And so she sets off for a year to immerse herself in one of the most intriguing saints of all time, St Thérèse of Lisieux, in an attempt to see whether Thérèse might be a moral and spiritual compass by which to sort out her own life.

The result is a powerful, deeply insightful adult book.

King recognises in Thérèse’s soul—in-

For further info or to book contact Michael or Gail at 076 352 3809 or 021 551 3923 info@fowlertours.co.za www.fowlertours.co.za/ poland-2016/

Sunday Reflections

lines that our faithful God is in charge of the journey, and so there is nothing to fear.

Jesus’ three friends are perhaps not seen at their very best, since they fall asleep, just as they will in Gethsemane, at the end of the story. Peter, however, struggles into wakefulness and makes the inept suggestion: “Master—it is good for us to be here, and let’s make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

Luke says Peter “did not know what he was talking about”; and our faithful God now makes his comment on the scene: “This is my Son, the chosen one: listen to him.”

That is what we are to do for the rest of our Lenten journey, of course, and we share the experience of those disciples who “found Jesus alone; and they were silent and told noone in those days anything of what they had seen”. God’s faithfulness is not, you see, dependent on our fidelity.

Southern Crossword #693

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final Reflection

lation of a city, and I wanted to plant a garden, tend animals, and live on a farm. I wanted to live in the same place all my life, and I wanted to travel every inch of the globe before I died. I wanted to sit utterly still, and I was also driven to be constantly on the move.

“I wanted to be hidden and anonymous, and I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be close to my family, and I wanted to leave my family behind.

“I wanted to devote my life to activism, and I wanted to devote my life to contemplation. I wanted to give everything to God, and I didn’t know how! I longed to give my undivided self, and I couldn’t!”

Reflecting on Thérèse’s vow of poverty, King writes: “Poverty is never, never voluntary. Poverty consists precisely in all the ways you absolutely don’t want to be poor.”

King also draws from the German poet Gertrud von le Fort, who wrote that when her soul was most in anguish everything around her in effect said: “But you are nothing!”

Kings writes: “At last someone had told my story. For the last ten years especially, I had been in anguish and ‘they’—my husband, the person I loved, the legal profession, the medical profession when I had cancer, the publishing industry—had said in so many words: ‘But you are nothing.’

Everywhere I turned: a blank wall. Everything I had hoped for: ashes. Everything I had worked for: ‘But you are nothing’.…

One morning in the shower, I wept to Christ: ‘I don’t love you and you don’t love me either!’”

We’ve all been there.

If you are struggling with faith, with brokenness in your life, with an obsession, with an addiction, with a gnawing sense that your life is not what it should be, with the sense of being the outsider, an orphan at all the banquets of life, and, most of all, with the sense you don’t love Jesus and he doesn’t love you either, that you are nothing, then let this book find you.

It’s a book for those who think they might be too sick to be helped by a doctor.

St John Paul II Pilgrimage to Poland Southern Cross

Nicholas King SJ

ACROSS

1. Aaron’s effigy of gold (4) 3. Angelic greeting prayer (3,5) 7. First woman in this finds robbers (7) 9. Arrived with nothing but a bit of jewellery (5) 10. Teenager who’s gone rusty (9) 12. Annual divisions (6) 14. Drapes that may enlarge (6) 16. Shiite religious leader (9) 19. Hidden store contains money, we hear (5) 20. Immediate coffee break? (7) 21 He awaits orders (8) 22 Beat horrible god in there (4)

DOWn

1. Underground cemetery (8) 2. Hen will do it inside but not for clergy (5) 4. Facial expression (6) 5. With regard to the code there is regret (7) 6. Sailor’s call from parts of 16 ac (4) 8. Condescend in prayer (9) 9. Hurls missiles by a long stretch (9) 11. Teacher (8) 13. Can nude have been subtly different? (7) 15. It returns in the moon movement (6) 17. Fifty out of health shrub (5) 18. Sound selfie? (4)

Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

A

morning prayer: So far today, Lord, I haven’t gossiped, nor lost my temper, nor been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, nor over-indulgent. I’m very happy about that.

But in a few minutes, Lord, I’m going to get out of bed, and from then on I’m probably going to need a lot more help.

Amen.

A journey to the places of St John Paul II’s life and devotions, led by a Bishop who knows Poland intimately.

Led by Bishop Stan Dziuba 13 - 21 May 2016

Kraków | Wadowice (on St john Paul II’s birthday) | Black Madonna of Częstochowa | niepokalanów (St Maximilian Kolbe) | Divine Mercy Sanctuary | Warsaw | Kalwaria Zebrzydowska (with miraculous icon) | Zakopane | Wieliczka Salt Mine (with Mass!)