160406

The

S outher n C ross

April 6 to April 12, 2016

Should we fear the drones?

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Reg No. 1920/002058/06

No 4971

www.scross.co.za

Pilgrimage in the land of the Samaritans

Page 9

R8,00 (incl VAT RSA)

Parish missions: SA has Year of Mercy zeal

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Court ruling a victory for democracy STAFF REPORTER

A

Archbishop Peter Wells, the new nuncio to Southern Africa is seen during his ordination to the episcopate by Pope Francis in St Peter's basilica at the Vatican on March 19. The USborn archbishop has said that he hopes to have taken up residency in the nunciature in Pretoria by the time of the ordination of Mgr Duncan Tsoke as auxiliary bishop of Johannesburg on April 30.

As nuncio, his role will be to represent the pope in the local Church—including his proposing new bishops—as well as to serve as the Vatican’s ambassador to South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho. Look out for an interview with Archbishop Wells in next week’s issue. (Photo: Paul Haring/CNS)

LL South Africans should celebrate the Constitutional Court’s ruling which proved that nobody in this country is above the law, according to the director of the Jesuit Institute.

The Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that President Jacob Zuma failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land by disregarding the Public Protector’s report that ordered him to repay some funds used in the upgrade to his homestead in Nkandla, KwaZuluNatal.

In its report, the Public Protector found that the construction of a cattle kraal, chicken run, swimming pool, visitors’ centre and amphitheatre were not essential security features, and that the president should therefore repay the state for the expenditure incurred.

The government and speaker of the National Assembly contended that the Public Protector’s order was not binding. The Constitutional Court found that they, in fact, are binding.

“Neither the president nor the National Assembly is entitled to respond to the binding remedial action taken by the Public Protector as if it is of no force or effect, unless it has been set aside through a proper judicial process,” Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said in the ruling.

“The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the judgment shows that nobody is above the law,” Jesuit Father Russell Pollitt told The Southern Cross. “This is something that all South Africans should celebrate.”

The priest said that the ruling showed “that our democracy has institutions that function as they should and that justice can and will be a reality if we allow the system to work as it should”.

He called the Constitutional Court “a treasure in South Africa”, saying that “the people of this country can have absolute confidence in this Court”.

He also praised the role of the Office of the Public Protector “which has now proved, again, to function exactly as it should: to pro-

President Jacob Zuma: Not above the law tect the people of South Africa”.

Fr Pollitt said Advocate Thuli Madonsela had been vindicated, adding: “It would also be good for all those in the ANC who accused the Public Protector of all sorts of [misdeeds] to publicly apologise.”

The ruling African National Congress in a statement said it accepted the ruling and expressed its “full confidence in the judiciary”, saying that, “given the serious nature of the judgment delivered”, it would “study it in detail”.

The opposition Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters said that they would initiate impeachment hearings against Mr Zuma.

“It is now, more than ever, that the ANC must show leadership and do what is for the good of the country and not what is good for the image of the ANC or Zuma himself,” Fr Pollitt said.

“President Zuma, if he really cares about the future of this country and respects the ANC, should seriously consider resigning. I am not sure how he can and will ever recover from this judgment. He is now, more than ever, a morally compromised and failed president,” Fr Pollitt said.

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

LOCAL

Sci-fi drones get real on rhino poachers

By MANDLA ZIBI

T

HE drones are coming! But wait, it’s not the end of the world yet.

If you think unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—as drones are known scientifically—are only weapons of war in President Barack Obama’s fight against Islamic extremists in the Middle East or intergalactic means of mass destruction in sci-fi novels, think again.

According to Danielle Hoffmeester of the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office (CPLO), drone technology is fast expanding beyond the so-called war on terror and “may soon land on your doorstep if you can pay approximately R10 000 for one”.

Despite their commonly sinister reputation, drones can be put to a number of good uses to benefit society, and some of those have specific relevance for South Africa.

These include fighting rhino poaching; better monitoring of livestock for farmers; better crime detection and prevention; and various other commercial uses.

With rhino deaths through poaching expected to outnumber live births in 2016 for the first time—triggering the point at which rhino will head towards extinction

in South Africa—authorities have used drones to combat the onslaught on the rhino population.

“Unofficial statistics show a marked decrease in the number of poaching incidents as a result, with some areas having, apparently, achieved complete abatement for the time being,” Ms Hoffmeester reported.

“Even the simplest drone technology will revolutionise the ability of South African farmers to perform tasks quickly and cheaply. Of course farmers will also benefit from the advanced technology being developed: crop-ripening surveillance for optimal harvesting; micro drones to pick insects off crops and livestock; and water-saturation measurement on a metre-by-metre basis,” added Ms Hoffmeester.

With regard to crime, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille has announced plans to employ drones to monitor known hotspots for cable theft. Approximately 170 tonnes of copper wire is stolen each month, the equivalent of R13 million.

“Not too long ago, drones would have been the stuff of a bad Terminator movie, but now this ‘eye in the sky’ technology is real and civilians are purchasing it at an ever-increasing rate” said Ms Hoffmeester .

She quoted Business Insider, a US

Drones have many practical uses, reports the CPLO, some of particular interest in South Africa, such as crime monitoring and rhino poacher surveillance. magazine, which estimates that by 2020 there will be 30 000 drones in American airspace.

While that kind of statistic seems too far-fetched for South Africa, our Civil Aviation Authority has already drafted rules to regulate the use of UAVs. These came into effect last July, which places South Africa

Festival Mass celebrates belonging

By MANDLA ZIBI

Bible audio first for SA

T

F

EELINGS of alienation have caused many Catholics from other countries—especially those from the African continent—who are living in South Africa to stop coming to church.

With this thought in mind, a “Festival of Nations” Mass was held at Lansdowne church, Cape Town, to send a message of belonging and unity in diversity in the Church.

Organised by the archdiocese’s Catholic immigrants’ chaplaincy and led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin, the packed event was a multilingual affair, with Mass being said in all the languages of the various immigrant communities across the archdiocese.

Fr Kizito Awonenji Gugah, originally from Malawi and one of the organising chaplains, said the aim of the festival was to unite all the immigrant communities scattered across the parishes but at the same time make them feel

pretty far ahead of its international counterpart as far as drone policy is concerned. The International Civil Aviation Organisation will publicise its UAV standards only in 2018.

Legitimate concerns around drones include infringement of privacy, aiding criminal activity and the potential of physical harm.

Lansdowne parish in Cape town held a “Festival of Nations” Mass for Catholics from other countries, especially those from other African countries, to send a message of belonging to all. part of each parish.

“All languages were used at the mass: Polish, Swahili, French—especially for those from Francophone Africa—Chewa, Portuguese, Italian, German, Indian languages, Igbo from Nigeria…you name it, we had it,” Fr Gugah said.

Equipped with sophisticated video gadgetry and largely silent, drones have a capacity for undetected, pervasive mass surveillance of people and make it easier for governments to collect information on their citizens.

“Since they represent a unique threat to privacy, the way in which they are used needs to be strictly controlled, particularly as they can be used against a government’s critics or its political or ideological opponents,” Ms Hoffmeester said.

Regarding private use of drones, she told of a woman in Seattle in the US who reported a drone hovering outside her bedroom as she was getting dressed.

Meanwhile, the US Border Patrol along the Mexican border has caught drones transporting narcotic substances into the US, and agents reported that in July 2014 drug drones made an estimated 150 trips between Mexico and the US. And alarmingly, a sudden loss of power could see a 7kg drone fall from the sky and land on you—and arresting the owner could prove difficult if the device is untraceable.

Back in South Africa, we even have a drone academy, called Curiosity Campus, to teach citizens more about the technology and how to operate it.

HE first complete audio Bible in English to be recorded in South Africa has been launched at the annual general meeting of the Bible Society of South Africa at Bible House in Bellville, Cape Town.

The text of this audio Bible is in the Good News translation and is available in MP3 format as well as on a small rechargeable device known as the Audibible.

Directions on how to use the Audibible device are supplied in braille, which makes this recording userfriendly for blind people.

During the last number of years the Bible Society, in partnership with Davar Partners International, a Chris-

tian organisation, has been producing single voice recordings of the complete Bible in the official languages of South Africa.

Apart from this English recording, audio Bibles are also available in isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, isiXhosa and Afrikaans. The Tshvenda recording, as well as the Siswati audio Bible, are currently underway.

Rev Dirk Gevers, CEO of the Bible Society, emphasised that the task of the society is to ensure that the Bible is accessible to all people. The audio Bible fulfils a definite need for those who cannot or prefer not to read, he said. n Visit www.biblesociety.co.za for more information.

Rev Stephen Ilechukwu (right) of the Oratorian congregation was ordained to the diaconate at Sacred Heart cathedral in Bloemfontein by Archbishop Jabulani Nxumalo of the archdiocese of Bloemfontein.

“The response was very good and we hope to hold this event every year,” he said, adding that next time they would like to add events of a more cultural nature.

Fr Gugah appealed to priests to spread the message about the Mass to their parishioners.

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

LOCAL

3

Mission priest impressed with Year of Mercy zeal STAFF REPORTER

T Domincan parishes and schools donated 25 tonnes of drinkable water to the people of Matwabeng near Senekal in Free State suffering from the drought.

Dominicans truck in water to drought areas

T

HE Dominican order delivered 25 tonnes of clean, drinkable water to the drought-stricken area of Matwabeng at Senekal, Free State.

The project was assisted by Radio Veritas and a few generous helpers, including three companies that facilitated the transport: Efficient Engineering, D&H Transport and Stellar Transport.

“In this Jubilee Year of Mercy it was felt that a constructive action like this would make a big impact and bring relief to people in our drought areas,” said Fr Emil Blaser, station director of Radio Veritas and a Dominican priest.

“Dominican brothers and sisters have been involved in South African parishes and schools for almost 100 years. An appeal was made to them to encourage pupils and parishioners to make a contribution of water,” he said.

“These institutions responded overwhelmingly. Indeed, many non-Dominican institutions also

made contributions.”

The people of Matwabeng were overjoyed, Fr Blaser noted.

“When the three huge trucks arrived with the water, people sang and danced, and very soon old and young started unloading the water. It was inspiring to see children who could hardly walk struggling with bottles of water.

People were greatly relieved,” he said.

“You don’t know how happy we are to receive clean water that, for a change, won’t give us diarrhoea,” exclaimed a recipient of the water at the local Catholic church.

This act comes at a time when Pope Francis, having declared the Jubilee Year of Mercy, calls for people to focus not only on their individual needs but also to open their hearts and homes to those less fortunate.

“We, as Dominicans, wanted to respond to a crying need in our country, and the ravaging drought provided us with an opportunity to make a difference”, said Fr Blaser.

HE Year of Mercy “has captured the imagination of our people in a dynamic way”, according to a priest who is leading the team that is giving parish missions throughout Southern Africa.

Reflecting on the six missions he presented in the first three months of 2016 in Cape Town, Redemptorist Father Larry Kaufmann said that these events “have been marked by an intensity I have not often experienced on regular missions”.

“Everywhere I have had the sense that for people this Jubilee Year is something different, and that they expected the mission to reflect that,” he said.

“In every parish I visited I was impressed and inspired by the level of dedication and pastoral zeal I encountered in every one of the parish priests. Much of my ‘ministry’ in the middle part of the day was listening to them, encouraging and affirming their efforts, or simply thanking them for their involvement in the mission,” Fr Kaufmann said.

He said he was especially moved by “the humble mission” in District Six, where a small but faithful group of people attended.

“The ‘healing of memories’ took on special poignancy” in the suburb which was ethnically cleansed and razed by the apartheid regime,” he said.

The mission coincided with the 50th anniversary of the National Party regime declaring District Six a white group area.

On parish missions Fr Kaufmann celebrates two morning Masses a day during the four-day missions.

In the Cape Town parishes he visited—Table View, Milnerton /Brooklyn, Rondebosch, District Six, Bellville/Bellville South and Elsies River—he found the 6:00 Mass “always well attended”, while the 9:00 Masses were attended “by many elderly and retired people who often would not be able to come in the evenings”, Fr Kauf-

Fr Larry Kaufmann closes a mission at Table View parish in Cape Town in February. The Redemptorist priest, who is coordinating parish missions in the year of Mercy throughout South Africa, has observed a special expression of faith in the parishes where he has been. mann said.

The 19:00 mission services were always well-attended, with some being standing-room only.

The evening mission themes cover the following themes: Monday: “Jesus Christ is the Face of the Father’s Mercy”, with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and a guided meditation focusing on our relationship with the Lord, ending with Benediction.

Tuesday: “Healing as an Experience of God’s Mercy”. Fr Kaufmann said these evenings were “always well attended”.

“There were lots of tears, especially during the guided meditation retracing the steps of life,” he said.

This was followed by a blessing with the “Oil of Mercy for the Healing of Memories”.

Wednesday: Penitential service, assisted by priests from the respective deaneries.

“What I encouraged people to emphasise when confessing was not so much ‘what I did’, and providing the long list, but ‘what I am—more

of a root sin, or ‘character’ sin, drawing on the ‘seven deadly sins’ from the Catechism,” Fr Kaufmann explained.

Thursday: “Eucharist as a Celebration of God’s Mercy” to close the mission, including renewal of baptismal vows.

“In lieu of prayers of intercession, representatives of various categories of people, chosen by the parish, lit candles on the altar while I invoked a blessing upon them,” Fr Kaufmann said.

“During the Eucharistic prayer, the lights of the church would be switched off, with light coming only from the candles burning on the altar,” he added.

After a break over Easter, Fr Kaufmann resumed his missions in early April in George, Oudtshoorn diocese.

Fr Kaufmann said his calendar for the rest of the year is booked out, with the Southern Cross Year of Mercy pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt from October 16-26 providing him with a break (see front page for details).

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4

The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

INTERNATIONAL

Muslim refugee family thanks pope for help

By CINDy WOODEN

W

A Palestinian girl smiles in Gaza City. The Vatican has said that no women or girl should ever be denied access to education or health care.

(Photo: Mohammed Saber, EPA/CNS) A photo of Pope Francis is seen on the wall as Adiba and Hassan, who fled from war in Libya with their four children, give an interview at a Catholic parish in Rome. (Photo: Paul Haring/CNS) two-room flat where he, his wife and four children live.

A Catholic parish answered Pope Francis’ call for every parish to take in a refugee or refugee family. While there is a small fridge and microwave in the apartment, there is no space to cook, so the family goes to the parish each day for lunch, traditionally the Italians’ main meal.

T

he children do their homework on their bunkbeds. The school requires every student to have a laptop computer, which was a worry for the family and parish. But Pope Francis, through his almoner’s office, provided what the kids needed.

The parish provided the Wi-Fi connection.

“If we ask for anything, they provide it,” Hassan said. “But this is not our life.”

Hassan—and his wife and children—see their lives as being in Sweden, where they have friends and relatives and had spent 15 months making a start for themselves. That ended shortly after the Paris terrorist attacks in November.

Fr Marco, pastor of the parish hosting the family, calls them “victims of the Dublin Regulation,” a European Union agreement that refugees must apply for asylum in the first EU country they arrive in and wait there for their cases to be heard.

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, governments that had not been enforcing the agreement took steps to do so. Hassan and his family were sent back to Italy from Sweden.

They slept rough before hearing about a makeshift centre for refugees staffed by welcoming volunteers.

From there, they went to a Red Cross shelter where Fr Marco and some of his parishioners volunteer.

“We are a family and at the Red Cross centre, there were many men,” Hassan said. He asked Fr Marco to help, and by Christmas they were in an apartment near the parish.

“I thank Don Marco and the pope—they help us too much,” Hassan said. “But for how long can they help us? I still feel much dark for our future.”—CNS

Archives on Argentine regime to be opened

By JUNNO AROCHO ESTEVES

A

T the request of Pope Francis, material in the Vatican secret archives relating to Argentina’s “Dirty War” is expected to be opened in the coming months, a Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told journalists that the cataloguing of materials related to Argentina’s dictatorship continues to move forward.

“The work goes on regularly and

is expected to be completed over the next few months,” he said, adding that the timing and conditions under which the material may be studied will be agreed upon with the Argentine bishops’ conference.

The Vatican’s announcement comes soon after the US government also announced it would move to declassify military and intelligence records from that tumultuous time in Argentina’s history.

Both announcements came in conjunction with the 40th anniver-

T

HE Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations called on nations to ensure that women and girls living in vulnerable settings are not “left behind” as the world strives to meet its next set of sustainable development goals by 2030.

“These women should not only be beneficiaries, but above all, they must be empowered to become dignified agents of their own development and important drivers of sustainable development,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza told the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Education and adequate health must not be denied to any woman or girl, Archbishop Auza said.

The Catholic Church and its worldwide network of schools, clinics and hospitals, and homes for the elderly and people with special needs, remains committed to promoting quality education and providing health care for women and girls, especially in developing countries and areas of conflict, he said.

In addition, the archbishop said, women and girls continue to experience violence, including rape as a weapon of armed conflicts, trafficking for sexual exploitation, forced abortion, forced marriage and forced conversion to other faiths, and he called for such actions to stop.

Citing the vital roles of women in diplomacy, policymaking, mediation and peacekeeping missions, Archbishop Auza said those efforts “must be translated into action to unleash skills and capacities that allow women to bring order out of chaos, community out of division and peace out of conflict”.

Elderly women must not be forgotten as the world focuses ever more on economic productivity and increasingly abandons family values, the archbishop said. He urged that rather than ignoring the elderly and leaving them to feel unwanted, steps be taken to help them feel welcome and productive through the wisdom they can offer societies.

Women also experience discrimination when motherhood is considered, he said, calling for wider recognition of the valuable role mothers play in raising and educating future generations.

“My delegation wishes to avail itself of this occasion to express grateful appreciation for all women who have raised generations of responsible daughters and sons,” Archbishop Auza said.

The Vatican diplomat also raised concern about the practices of abortion and in vitro fertilisation, with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis being used to selectively eliminate girls, leading to unnatural disparities in the number of girls and boys being born. He said studies show “a worldwide deficit of more than 160 million girls compared to boys”.

“Empowering women means creating conditions necessary for them to flourish, in full acceptance of and in accordance with their natural genius as women, and in harmonious complementarity with the gifts of men,” Archbishop Auza concluded.

“Empowering women and girls will greatly help the world community not to leave anyone behind and their empowerment will empower us all.”—CNS

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sary of the 1976 coup that brought the dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla to power.

In an interview with Radio America Mgr Guillermo Karcher, an Argentine priest and close aide to Pope Francis, said the archives would shed a light on the forced disappearances of people opposed to the dictatorship in power from 1976 to 1983.

Estimates of the number of people killed or forcibly disappeared during those years range from about 13 000 to more than 30 000.—CNS

Vatican to UN: Don’t leave women behind

N

ALKING in a crowded Rome neighbourhood with his prayer beads wrapped around one hand, Hassan said, “You must write: Big thanks to the pope because he helps my kids —really.”

Hassan and his family, who are Muslim, are being hosted by a Catholic parish in Rome.

Like millions of refugees around the world, Hassan packed up his family to flee violence and to try to find a safe place where his children could grow and thrive.

Also like many refugees, his story is much more complicated than that. Hassan is a Palestinian born in a refugee camp in Lebanon. After university studies there, he had a good career as a nurse. Then came the war.

He stayed, though, working harder than ever. “Too much blood,” he said.

Hassan was shot in the arm; the entrance- and exit-wound scars are still visible.

Seeking a safe place to work and to find a wife and start a family, he moved to Libya in 1986. He met and married Adiba, whose father is Palestinian and mother Egyptian. Hassan and Adiba eventually had four children. Hassan found a job in a hospital and ran a shop for a while. They bought a home and later a small farm. Then came the war.

Hassan and his family had boarded an overcrowded fishing boat in Libya on September 5, 2014, arriving in Italy and then moving on to Sweden.

During an interview in Rome Hassan constantly fingers his prayer beads, which he made himself by stringing together 33 olive pits.

Many Muslims use the beads to recite God’s praises, but Hassan said his prayer usually is repetitions of “God, help us”.

“I always am praying. That is why I am still alive,” he said in the tiny

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INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

5

Christian leaders slam terrorists’ ‘insane’ views C Pictures of victims of the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s are displayed on a table in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, as people watch a TV broadcast of an international tribunal in the Netherlands. (Photo: Fehim Demir, EPA/CNS)

‘Bosnian war crimes denial must end’

By JONATHAN LUxMOORE

C

HURCH leaders in BosniaHerzegovina said a 40-year sentence against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, convicted of genocide and nine other charges, will not secure peace.

“The imprisoning of one man won’t solve our problems,” said Mgr Ivo Tomasevic, secretary-general and spokesman of the bishops’ conference. “The whole project he stood for—a war for territory involving ethnic cleansing—needs to be condemned and dismantled at its deepest sources.”

A UN-sponsored international criminal tribunal in the Netherlands sentenced Karadzic. Karadzic was found guilty of orchestrating war crimes—including the July 1995 massacre of 8 000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica—during Bosnia’s 1992-95 civil war.

Mgr Tomasevic said that Catholics in Bosnia-Herzegovina were still suffering the consequences of “territorial occupation and ethnic cleansing”

by Serb forces, adding that he and Bosnian Cardinal Vinko Puljic had been violently accosted when trying to visit parishes in Serb-controlled areas long after the 1995 Dayton peace accord, which brought an end to ethnic violence among Serbs, Muslims and Croats.

However, since then, Bosnian bishops repeatedly have said the mostly Catholic Croat community in the country is powerless and faces discrimination in a nation still di-

vided along ethnic lines.

Mgr Tomasevic said the Church had sought “good ecumenical ties” with Serbian Orthodox and other religious communities, but found this difficult when past crimes were continually denied.

“It will be difficult to build peace without recognising the war crimes committed and without acknowledging this was a war instigated in Belgrade by Serb forces,” he said.

“It’s also important that people should admit guilt for their own sins and seek redemption, distinguishing clearly between good and bad. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be happening.”

Karadzic, who insisted on his innocence, is the most senior former Balkan leader to be convicted by the UN tribunal, which so far sentenced 80 of 161 indicted figures and acquitted or dropped charges against 54.

“As long as there’s no repentance, it will be difficult to talk of any healing process. In dealing with past evil, it’s important to monitor everything and call everything by its real name,” Cardinal Puljic said.

“Crimes cannot be settled with crimes, wounds healed with wounds, or lies corrected with lies,” said the cardinal.

“Throughout history, we’ve seen how people commit evil and then wash their hands, claiming they’re not guilty—people disappear and are killed, but no one is to blame,” he said.

Karadzic’s lawyers said they would appeal his sentence, a process expected to take several years.—CNS

Vatican zeros in on African human rights abuses

I

N a region fraught with political, ethnic and religious divisions, the Central African Republic’s motto of “Unity, Dignity, and Work” can serve as a foundation for healing and progress in Africa’s Great Lakes region, a Vatican representative told the UN. “No solutions to the region’s many problems would be possible if there are divisions instead of unity, grave violations of human rights instead of respecting the dignity of all, and extreme poverty instead of dignified work for all,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza, permanent observer of the Holy See to the UN said.

Archbishop Auza’s remarks came as part of the UN Security Council debate on “The Prevention and Resolution of Conflicts in the Great Lakes Region”.

Although the Great Lakes region of Africa—which includes Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic—is home to rich biodiversity, it’s also a place of “political instability and bad governance, corruption and extreme poverty, ethnic divisions and exploitative use of the abundant natural resources”, he said.

Pope Francis reflected on Central African Republic’s motto during his

visit last November, and Archbishop Auza said that the values of “Unity, Dignity, and Work” can serve the entire Great Lakes region of Africa.

“The pope sees in this trilogy an expression of the aspirations of each Central African and, indeed, of each of the inhabitants of the Great Lakes region,” Archbishop Auza said. “My delegation believes that these three values of unity, dignity and work are pillars of any prosperous society and thus could greatly facilitate solutions to the complex of causes of armed conflicts and underdevelopment in the region.”

He called unity “a cardinal value” that would help build respect for “the plurality of political views and religious beliefs” of an area that is home to different tribes, communities and faiths. On the other hand, recognising the inherent dignity of all is essential to building up “mutual respect and solidarity”.

The Holy See’s top priority in all her diplomatic activities, he said, is “preventive action geared toward safeguarding the inviolable dignity of every human person, protecting fundamental human rights, promoting education and health care for all, and fostering the identity of each people”.—CNS

HRISTIAN religious leaders across Asia called for Muslims to take a stand against Islamic extremists, seek reconciliation and forgiveness, and pursue a peaceful interpretation of religion in the aftermath of the Easter massacre at a public park in Pakistan.

“The attack is an outcome of a barbaric and insane interpretation of religion by a group of misguided people who exploit religion for vested interests,” Bishop Gervas Rozario of Rajshahi, Bangladesh, chairman of the Bangladeshi bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, told ucanews.com.

“From Europe to Asia, no one is safe from fundamentalist threats and attacks, not even in Bangladesh where the majority of Muslims are peaceful. But minorities continue to be attacked sporadically and possibilities of a gruesome attack like that of Lahore can’t be dismissed,” Bishop Rozario said.

People hold candles during a gathering to mourn the victims of suicide bomb attack in Pakistan.

(Photo: Rahat Dar, EPA/CNS) “There are many good Muslims and they must play an active role in collaboration with the government to contain the rise of fundamentalism,” he said.

He said religious minorities, especially Christians, must “engage more in dialogue with good Muslims to resist fundamentalism through social movements”.

Any attack in the name of religion is un-Islamic, said Mufti Ainul Islam, head imam of Hizbul Bahar Jame mosque in Dhaka.

“Those who are behind such attacks are insane, misled people and their acts are utterly unacceptable and condemnable,” he said, describing the perpetrators of religion-based violence as “foolish” and “ignorant” about the teachings of the Quran.

Bishop Yohanes Yuwono of Tanjungkarang, chairman of the Indonesian bishops’ interfaith commission, urged all people to seek peace.

“The pope’s act of washing the feet of a Muslim and a Hindu indicates a hope for peace throughout the world,” Bishop Yuwono said. “We should always echo such a message.”—CNS

Late EWTN founder praised for her service to worldwide Church

‘S

HE’S in heaven”. The pope pointed to the sky as he spoke these words to members of Eternal Word Television Network’s Rome bureau, who brought an image of Mother Anglica, founder of the Network (EWTN), to the pope’s general audience.

Mother Angelica, who turned EWTN into one of the world’s largest religious media operations, died on March 27 at age 92.

Feisty and outspoken, she was a major controversial figure in the US Church in the closing decades of the 20th century.

Mother Angelica was born on April 20, 1923, in Canton, Ohio.

In 1944, she joined her religious order and professed her solemn vows in 1953. In 1962, she founded Our Lady of the Angels monastery, a move she said was to fulfil a promise to Christ if she emerged from an operation able to walk.

Before starting EWTN, Mother Angelica wrote what she called “mini-books” on moral and inspirational themes, and she began appearing on television talk shows. She said these appearances made her aware of the tremendous influence television

EWTN founder Mother Angelica.

(Photo: CNS/EWTN) has in spreading messages.

With the support of her religious community, Mother Angelica began consulting with media experts about starting her own TV station, hatching the idea of EWTN. EWTN went on the air in August 1981.

Mother Angelica built the venture into a network that transmits programmes 24 hours a day to more than 230 million homes in 144 countries. It broadcasts in English and several other languages.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Cross to Mother Angelica for distin-

SHEILA POLLARD ATTORNEY & FAMILY MEDIATOR

guished service to the Church. The cross is the highest papal honour that can be conferred on laypeople and clergy.

In 1997, she got into a public squabble with Cardinal Roger Mahony, then archbishop of Los Angeles, when, on her TV show “Mother Angelica Live”, she criticised his pastoral letter on the Eucharist, saying it was confusing about the real presence of Christ.

In 1993, she termed “blasphemous” a Church-sponsored World Youth Day event during St John Paul II’s visit to Denver because a mime troupe used a woman to portray Jesus in a dramatised Way of the Cross.

The criticism sparked Archbishop Rembert Weakland, then head of the Milwaukee archdiocese, to call her attack “vitriolic”.

“She invited everyone who disagreed with her to leave the Church,” said Archbishop Weakland.

Mother Angelica often said she accompanied her faith with a “theology of risk”. “Faith is having one foot on the ground and the other up in the air, waiting for the Lord to put the ground under it.”.—CNS

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

LEADER PAGE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

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.

Solution to holy days of obligation

How we respond to terror N

R

ECENT events have heightened anti-Muslim sentiments in the West—giving the terrorists a victory they seek.

Last month’s terror attack on the Belgian capital Brussels, attributed to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), was an obvious assault on the Western way of life, intended to replace order and civil liberty with fear and the abrogation of freedom. This is one of the objectives in attacking Western targets.

A second effect of the terror attacks is to turn citizens in traditionally Christian countries against immigrants of Muslim background, regardless of whether these have sympathies with the aims of ISIS or al-Qaeda or any other selfproclaimed jihadist group.

The anti-Muslim hostility has found absurd expression in statements by US politicians that advocate the internment or surveillance of all Muslims in that country. In Europe far-right political parties profit in support from a fear of refugees from the Middle East—equating asylum seekers with the very same people from whom they are seeking refuge.

In many places, Muslims have been held collectively responsible for terror, being confronted with demands for “apologies”.

Of course, holding all people of a particular background collectively responsible for the actions of “people like them” is precisely the bigotry that drives disillusioned Muslims to these terrorists groups.

By reciprocating intolerance, the West actively aids the terrorists.

The media and social networks are culpable in feeding the sense of suspicion and prejudice by disseminating often false information.

ISIS must have been delighted at the false reports that the group had crucified an abducted Indian priest, Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnalil, on Good Friday.

The “news” was unverified, but all denials notwithstanding, it will have deepened anti-Muslim attitudes and amplified fears about an already ruthless organisation.

Sensationalistic news which entrenches anti-Muslim attitudes is widely and quickly disseminated, yet events that challenge the narrative of a cultural-religious war are often ignored.

So it was with the remarkable news in December of nearly 70 000 Indian Muslim clerics signing a fatwa (or decree) against ISIS and other terror groups, saying these are “not Islamic organisations”.

This had been preceded by several other fatwas against terrorism is-

sued by leading Muslim clerics.

Obviously, these fatwas won’t stop the terrorists, much as Pope Pius IX’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge did not stop Nazi atrocities.

Nevertheless, when terrorists kill scores of Christian at a children’s gathering in Pakistan, or murder Catholic nuns and their helpers in Yemen, or when we are led to believe that a priest has been crucified, our response must be to condemn terrorism, not to adopt knee-jerk anti-Muslim sentiments.

Like Pope Francis, we should understand why ordinary Muslims are offended when their religion is automatically equated with terrorism.

Indeed, we do well to remember that the primary targets of ISIS are not the West and Christians, but other Muslims.

It is incumbent on Churches, and on individual Christians, to build bridges of reciprocal solidarity with moderate and mainstream Islam.

This is already happening in many areas where Christians and Muslims live side by side. Sometimes this is demonstrated in dramatic ways.

For example, when extremists targeted Christian churches for attack in Egypt during the upheavals there a few years ago, in many places Muslims formed protective rings around churches—a concrete sign of solidarity.

The cooperation between the Catholic Emmanuel cathedral in Durban and the neighbouring Juma Masjid mosque is an inspiring example of a friendship that is pleasing to God—and displeasing to both the Islamic extremists and racist demagogues in the West.

Active and visible interfaith solidarity is the key to weakening ISIS and their ilk, and to tempering the division, fear and bigotry that their terrorism helps to breed in the West.

Visiting the Central African Republic last November, Pope Francis called for “an end to every act which, from whatever side, disfigures the face of God and whose ultimate aim is to defend particular interests by any and all means”. In January he told diplomats that it is essential to proclaim that “those who claim to believe in God must also be men and women of peace”.

This is the message that must guide our responses to all the horrific news and to the divisive reactions these produce.

ICHOLAS Mitchell of Port Elizabeth (March 2) asks the bishops to restore the ancient calendar feasts of the Assumption and Ascension to holy days of obligation.

After many decades of few or no Catholic schools, two or three generations have mainly attended nonCatholic schools. Consequently, the faithful have fewer catechetical advantages and less sensus fidei than those enjoyed by Catholics 60 years ago.

Many catechism pupils know

Toastmasters can help on homilies

Y

OUR editorial “Opening the pulpit” (March 16) certainly resonated!

It is said that speaking in public is among the most stressful of human experiences. But boring homilies are a pain. And while homilies are certainly not the most important reason for attending Mass, they do play an important role.

But there are options.

In many communities there are Toastmaster clubs which, by a gradual process of personal experience, tuition and guidance, assist ordinary folk to understand how to frame a subject and feel comfortable when delivering a speech in front of others.

Toastmasters have “impromptu” speeches where one has to address a subject without preparation—and, of course, there are “prepared” talks on a subject of your own choice.

And it is a gradual process, so that one can ease into it.

All in all, it’s a great learning curve during which you meet other like-minded folk bent on improving their public-speaking abilities, and themselves!

Which brings me to Fr Chris Townsend’s revelations on the priestly life (March 9). An evening of Toastmasters not only prepares one for public speaking, but it is a social occasion where like minds meet and friendships can be forged.

It is certainly not a “lonely-hearts club”, but it provides an excellent forum for learning, and socialising while also having fun.

When priests are moved from one parish to another, what sort of guidance and support is provided?

Does the local bishop visit to ensure everything is hunkydory?

Or are these priests left to their own devices, struggling along blindly in the wake of a departing incumbent who might well have left things in a mess?

What contribution do the powers that be make towards alleviating

PRICE CHECK

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nothing at all about holy days of obligation and the majority cease attending Sunday Mass soon after their Confirmation.

Their minds need to be straightened out and they need to be re-attracted to the Eucharistic celebrations, perhaps by our sending them on pilgrimages to Rome, Lourdes, Fatima or—more affordably—Ngome.

As for Mr Mitchell’s concerns, perhaps the bishops’ decision was taken to avoid heaping unbearable obsta-

the loneliness described by Fr Townsend?

Perhaps a little hierarchical nurturing is needed to make our priests feel less alone—and lonely!

Geoff Harris, Rooi Els, Western Cape

Only priests and deacons qualify

I

RESPOND to your editorial on lay ministers saying the homily, “Opening the pulpit” (March 16).

During Mass we are celebrating and recognising the incarnation, passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. We don’t go to Mass simply to have people get together to sing songs or listen to someone telling us how to be a nicer person and to make the world a better place to live in.

As stated by Rev Dwight Longenecker: “The Mass is not just a cheerful fellowship where we all hold hands and try to raise one another’s self-esteem. The Mass is not a political rally in which we are instructed in an ideology to change the world.”

The priest and deacon are standing in persona Christi. As Rev Longenecker states further, the priest and deacon “represent Christ symbolically and liturgically. One as Christ the Priest, the other as Christ the Servant. When the priests and deacons read and preach the Gospel, therefore, they are exercising not only a teaching function, but a signifying function. They are liturgically incarnating Christ the Teacher and Christ the Servant to the people.”

So how important is the homily at Holy Mass? In the scope of the saOpinions expressed in The Southern Cross, especially in Letters to the Editor, do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or staff of the newspaper, or of the Catholic hierarchy. The letters page in particular is a forum in which readers may exchange opinions on matters of debate.

Letters must not be understood to necessarily reflect the teachings, disciplines or policies of the Church accurately.

Letters can be sent to PO Box 2372, Cape Town 8000 or editor@scross.co.za or faxed to 021 465-3850

cles on people with jobs. I suggest that on the calendar dates of the feasts, priests should organise a day of continuous adoration before the Blessed Sacrament with pensioners, unemployed and self-employed parishioners taking one-hour turns throughout the day, culminating with Mass in the evening.

If the priests would preach on the events on the preceding as well as the succeeding Sundays, more Catholics might become aware of just how good and beneficial it would be for them to celebrate those occasions.

Luky Whittle, Kroonstad

cred liturgy as a whole, it’s not terribly important. If the homily is such a bane to one’s existence, offer your having to endure it up to God. The Church is already suffering enough with attempts at Protestantising the Mass. Just because a priest doesn’t have the charisma or “stage presence” to make the homily exciting, do we now have to call for lay people to say the homily?

Even the worst of homilies can do little to rob the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass of its transcendent grandeur.

I, for one, wouldn’t like to have the homilies being given by anyone but my priest or deacon, and I see no reason to go against Pope John Paul II’s tightening the ban on lay preaching.

C Sass, Port Elizabeth

Absolutely no to women preachers

I

WRITE in response to the article “Theologians on women preaching at Mass” (March 16).

I am completely taken aback at the “urgency” with which this topic needs to be addressed.

Our faith has an ethereal beauty that should not be touched by modernism. We, however, seem to be moving closer and closer to Protestantism in our ways of thinking and worshipping, and losing the essence of the Holy Mass.

Perhaps these women that would prefer to preach need to look at the lives of people like Bl Mother Teresa and Mother Angelica. They found wonderful channels of expression in a manner that was still very much in line with their calling.

Surely the sisters who feel the necessity to preach a homily knew what they were called to initially?

As a Catholic woman, I cannot support this and I fear that this will create an even bigger schism within the Church.

Continue with this and pretty soon we will have female priests.

Personally, I would never attend a Holy Mass presided over by a female or where a female preaches the homily.

Melissa Belcher, Eshowe, KZN

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HE Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) and Jesuit Institute called for “bold” action and “unambiguous” leadership from the African National Congress’ national executive committee in the wake of March’s explosive allegations of the Gupta family’s meddling in the appoint

The Jesuit Institute hailed Mr Jonas and former MP Vytjie Mentor for admitting that the Gupta family had offered them cabinet posts.

“The recent revelations by senior members of the ANC suggest that the party still has bold and courageous members who have both integrity and the capacity to deal with the challenge it faces,” the institute said. “That

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

PERSPECTIVES

The next Church scandal: Money T HE powerful movie Spotlight showcased the failure of Church leadership to initially respond to the scandal of the abuse of minors.

In the South African Church, thanks to the leadership of Frs Vincent Brennan SMA, Mike Lewis SJ and Desmond Nair and the members of the SACBC Professional Conduct Committee, the Church had a well thought-out protocol for the handling of allegations of abuse (see www.sacbc.org.za/protection).

I’d like to point to another scandal that the Church has to be prepared for. It is something that the Professional Conduct Committee has been warning about for years: money.

Generally, the Church has a rather free attitude to money. Naturally, temporal goods of the Church are just that—temporal. But the natural laws of honesty and accountability must still apply, as must the moral imperative to tell the truth.

In my experience, this coming and present scandal of how the Church uses money and goods is not going to affect only the clergy. Yes, there are some fairly devious and clever clergy out there, but this scandal will strike at a different locus. This will mainly be lay people.

Having worked in the Church as a priest for over 15 years, I have had my fair share of witnessing and of dealing with this scandal—among, of course, also a lot of dedicated and proper service in the administration of Church finances.

Mostly, the mismanagement and misappropriation of Church finances and goods starts off by small gaps in process.

Like making your collectors of parish money also your counters at the same Mass and then making them bankers.

We also need to ensure a reasonable rotation on parish finance committees.

We generally have a “leave well enough alone” attitude that can easily evolve into a “left-to-our-own-devices” opportunism which in turn can quickly spiral into dishonesty, theft, cheating and fraud.

Parishioners need to be far more demanding of their finance responsibles, in-

cluding their clergy.

In the last 15 years, I’ve seen a lack of clear process and checking turn into a financial free-for-all. I’ve seen how everything from negligence to opaqueness to a scorched-earth policy to financial recordkeeping requirements.

We have all heard of the fast-and-loose attitude to staff, pensions, salaries and other statutory requirements. I’ve seen tender-nitis, preferred bids and similar deceptions that might make FIFA seem as if it was in league with some parish communities.

S

o what is the response? Well, I see a few things necessary.

The Church needs to be hard—SARS hard—in dealing with fraud and theft. We need to have a common, well-developed practice that can be implemented in parishes, such as the archdiocese of Johannesburg already does.

We also need to be prepared to lay charges against thieves—lay or cleric. We cannot play true to the law in some things only. Theft is theft.

Bishops, you need to seriously reconsider the practical training of priests in the seminary. Get over the idealised spiritualism priesthood that the whole seminary structure is geared towards.

Train your men to be managers. Give

Financial dishonesty in parishes is the next big scandal to hit the Church, Fr Chris Townsend warns while offering ways to put things right now.

Fr Chris Townsend

Five ways to get us through the day Judith Turner A LL of us have daily schedules and daily rituals. These rituals give meaning to our days.

Two years ago I found myself with nothing to do. I had no job, I was injured in a motor vehicle accident, and I was just at home.

Before that I had a pretty routine and easy daily ritual. Wake up, get up, do a few things and off to work. But this time of unemployment and injury was an opportunity for me to take stock of my life and pay attention to the things that I do—especially in the morning, the start of the day.

More and more I am becoming aware that morning and daily rituals deepen our spirituality and put us in touch with our deepest self and the sweet experience of who we really are.

At this point in my life my daily routine consists of a couple of rituals at home and at work, five of which I would like to share with you.

Coffee meditation. I long wrestled with the difficulty of meditating immediately upon waking up. It’s really difficult to have just woken up and then to sit down and meditate because you’re just dozing off the entire time.

But a simple cup of coffee became a meditation ritual for me. I make a cup of coffee, sip it and enjoy all of it. While I am doing that I reflect on what was on my mind the night before, and what lies ahead for me during the coming day.

Keeping a journal. My coffee has now

Faith and Life

The sun rises on another day. Judith Turner looks at five ways to give the day meaning. woken me up and there are a few thoughts which I would like to remember and savour.

These I write in my journal. Some mornings it is just one word, other mornings two pages, but either way there is a feeling of completeness once I have written. Some mornings this can even happen before my coffee meditation and sometimes not at all.

Silent meditation. If there was one practice that I would like to do every single morning with absolute dedication, it would be silent meditation. Mornings are short and I feel rushed. So I cannot do this every morning. Although I love this practice, when and how long I do it, fluctuates. A daily silent meditation is one of the most powerful practices there is and I really want to be more committed to it.

Working. Most of us go to work everyday: at a job, at home or at church. Work is an extension of who we are. It’s something only humans can do. Animals do not work,

Michael Shackleton

Open Door

Pastor’s Notebook

them the skills and tools to not only spiritually animate communities, but also to ensure that the communities are managed well.

You are tossing your men into situations for which most are poorly prepared.

They can’t manage, and without proper preparation, they will never be able to take the oversight role that they are expected to take, mandated to in canon law and for which they are responsible in civil law.

Drop the bumph courses and give your men proper training!

Dioceses also need to standardise their reporting requirements and tighten up procedures. A number of years ago there was a parish management manual produced at considerable expense, but it was never implemented—because of its considerable expense.

Work together to get that process streamlined from seminary training all the way to diocesan transparency and reporting.

Statutory requirements are the same throughout the country. Standardise! SARS and others will be more than happy to assist in getting a standard format for reporting. In fact, it exists already as a requirement for PBOs. Injury on duty, PAYE, provident funds, health and safety stuff are all standard.

Break down the walls of isolation and work to make the Church a model of compliance.

Finally, let the Church stop saying that there are no qualified people. Clergy are mandated to oversight. But there are so many others who are more than capable.

They run families, spaza shops and businesses.

If they are able to do their best for their families, with insightful oversight, we can run the Church as a model of transparency.

they merely live and survive.

Work brings out our creativity, it helps us become better at what we do, and it is a service to humanity. Work gives us dignity. Unemployment is depressing and debilitating when you do not have something meaningful to do. Work can redeem us.

Enjoying relationships. My work brings me into contact with many people—colleagues, members, beneficiaries, service providers, networks. These relationships are a cornerstone of my day.

Having these relationships is a deep, mostly spiritual experience because I connect with people who bring meaning to my personal and professional life. It is through relationships that we can experience that ultimate reality of who we are A daily doze of nothingness. I believe each person should have a daily doze of nothingness—a time to just escape the day and forget about the realities of life.

This keeps me sane. At the end of the day I love to just come home and do nothing, watch 7de Laan and for 30 minutes escape into a world of unreality and fantasy.

These rituals keep us connected to ourselves and to our Creator. These rituals become our prayer for the day.

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What exactly is an indulgence?

Perplexed by the Church’s teaching on indulgences, I sought guidance from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 14711473. I found the explanation there inadequate, leaving me no wiser. Please explain in really simple words what an indulgence is.

P Evans

I

N the early Church the faithful were very close to one another in love and good works.

When members behaved sinfully and repented, they were given a public penance to encourage them to abandon their sinful habits and rely on the love and help of their fellow Christians.

The penance, which could last for months, might, for instance, be to dress in penitential clothing or to be refused the Eucharist. Sacramental absolution was given only after the penance was concluded. They were then reconciled with the Church and God. This delaying of absolution led to the fear that some could die or be near death before the penance period had elapsed. So bishops would shorten the penance, trusting in God’s mercy and the prayers of the Christian community. This modified penance was called an indulgence and was always associated with the sacrament of reconciliation.

In later centuries absolution was given first, followed by the performing of the penance, such as visiting a shrine, prayers and works of charity.

But the idea of an indulgence was still attached to the practice of being let off so many days or months of the original penance—the socalled temporal punishment for sin—and so began the practice of attaching indulgences to various prayers and pilgrimages.

Devout people wanted to accumulate indulgences as a kind of hedge against a long stay in purgatory, sometimes irrespective of their personal faith and state of soul. The scandal of the sale of indulgences in the 15th century was due to this perception.

The Catechism says that sin, even venial sin, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth or after death in purgatory. This purification process frees one from what is called the temporal punishment of sin.

Here temporal punishment is not linked to the idea of a shortened time of penance. Rather, it is the unhealthy attachment to worldly practices that can keep us in evil ways.

How can we be freed from this condition? One way is to perform the acts required for an indulgence: prayer, works of charity, confession, holy Communion. These acts, done by one with the right disposition and sorrow for sin, can amount to some satisfaction to God for offending him.

The Church, as the Christian community, claims authority to prescribe these exercises to cleanse its members from some (partial indulgence) or all (plenary indulgence) of the effects of sin, provided there is repentance and forgiveness.

n Send your queries to Open Door, Box 2372, Cape Town, 8000; or e-mail: opendoor@scross.co.za; or fax (021) 465 3850. Anonymity can be preserved by arrangement, but questions must be signed, and may be edited for clarity. Only published questions will be answered.

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

Fr Chris Townsend washes the feet of parishioners on Holy Thursday at Christ the King parish in Queenswood, Pretoria.

St Anthony’s parish in Sedgefield, diocese of Oudtshoorn, was one of seven churches which participated in the Slow Festival.

Each parish re-enacted a part in the last week of Jesus’ life.

The idea was to walk from one church to the next as a pilgrimage. Parishioners Maria, Joan, Bobby, David and Attie are pictured at one of the scenes at the top of the hill in Smutsville, Sedgefield.

COMMUNITY

Archbishop George Daniel retired of Pretoria, washed the feet of Little Eden residents in Bapsfontein on Holy Thursday.

Fr John Thompson SDB leads a procession of the crucifix through the faithful on Good Friday at Don Bosco parish in Robertsham , Johannesburg.

(Photo: Mark Kisogloo)

The liturgy committe and members of the Men for Change group of St Mary Magdalene parish in Lentegeur, Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town, erected a tree cross for the Easter season which included a real crown of thorns. The heavy tree stumps which make up the cross were covered in messages from parishioners.

HOLY SITES TRAVEL SEE THE HOLY LAnD

Pilgriamge to the Holy Land with Fr. Mpogopasi September 2016, Price: R32,000.00 [t&c]

Book now to secure your seat Contact Elna, Tel: 082 975 0034 E-mail: elna@holysites.co.za

Fr Tom Segame baptised 54 infants during a packed Sunday Mass at St Peter Claver parish in Pimville, Soweto. (Photo: Sello Mokoka)

C

M PA I G

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admin@scross.co.za 021 465 5007 www.scross.co.za/ associates-campaign

Chris Abrahams of Eucharistic Heart of Jesus parish in Cambridge, East London, received seven distinctions in his matric plus a distinction in advanced programmed mathematics, a subject not usually taken in matric. Chris is studying mechatronics at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. He is pictured with Fr Varghese Kannanaikal CMI.

Archbishop Stephen Brislin washes the feet of parishioners at St Mary’s cathedral in Cape Town on Holy Thursday. (Photo: Michelle Perry)

The St Vincent de Paul Society held a festival meeting at St Louis parish in Durban.

Members are seen here with Deacon Peter Landsberg (front left).

Send us your photos to pics@scross.co.za

Please be patient there is a queue of photos awaiting publication

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The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

PILGRIMAGE

Samaria: Where Jesus dared to go

9

Ancient Samaria was hostile territory for Jesus, yet he went there. In the fourth part of his series on the recent Pilgrimage of the Peacemakers, GüNTHER SIMMERMACHER takes us on a tour of the region.

Y

OU know the story well: on the busy road from Jerusalem to Jericho a man is robbed and assaulted. Three men of virtue pass by the injured victim without helping. Then a Samaritan comes and selflessly gives aid.

To Jesus’ listeners that parable was shocking. They expected to hear the story of the Bad Samaritan, because for the Jews of the time, the people of Samaria were the enemy, the dangerous Other of whom no good could be expected.

Today most of old Samaria is located in the West Bank, the territory Israel has illegally occupied since the 1967 war. After occupying the region, Israel planned to call it by its biblical name, Samaria, but the Palestinians rejected the idea.

In fact, the Palestinians might have had good cause to claim the name Israel themselves for the region, for this was its name almost 3 000 years before the modern state of Israel adopted that name.

After Solomon’s first Kingdom of Israel split into two halves, the southern part—Jerusalem, Bethlehem and so on—was known as the Kingdom of Judah, while the northern kingdom, that of the Samaritans, took the name Israel.

The battles of Elijah with the prophets of the idol Baal and the story of Ahab and Jezebel who had turned from the one God to pagan worship are set within the context of that division.

That battle came to a head on Mount Carmel, which overlooks the modern city of Haifa, where Elijah vanquished the prophets of Baal in an extraordinarily bloody slaughter, returning the Kingdom of Israel to the worship of Yahweh.

But the people of the Kingdom of Israel, the Samaritans, continued to practise a separate form of Judaism, with their own temple on Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, the biblical Shechem.

The Samaritans believed that they were the custodians of genuine Judaism, arguing that the Jews of Jerusalem were practising a corrupted form of the religion after the Babylonian exile.

Even today there are a few hundred remaining Samaritans living on Mount Gerizim, which they believe is the original holy place of Israel from the time of Joshua’s conquest.

The Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist in 720 BC. There was no other Israel until 1948.

Today’s area of old Samaria is littered with checkpoints manned by the Israeli Defence Force, which occupies much of the West Bank.

Tourist buses pass these without trouble. Still, not many pilgrimages include the holy sites of ancient Samaria.

This is a pity, since it includes the location of a very important story in the gospels: Jesus’ mid-day encounter with the woman at the well.

Jesus at Jacob’s Well

P

icture the scene: Jesus is alone at the well, which was built by the patriarch Jacob, in a hostile land.

He then asks the woman, whom he knows to be of compromised virtue, for water.

Jesus and the woman are at the well to draw life-sustaining water which our bodies need to function.

But, of course, that’s not the whole story, for it is Jesus who is the living water.

And it is in conversation with a sinner that Jesus announces God’s

Archbishop Stephen Brislin embraces Jamal, the Muslim curator of the Greek Orthodox church of St Photina, which houses Jacob’s Well in Nablus; the ruins of a Byzantine church in Sebastia; Günther Simmermacher with Nadim Khoury, founder of the Taybeh brewery. plan of salvation which bridges the old sectarian division between Gerizim and Jerusalem.

Isn’t it marvellous how the most important announcements in the Gospel are made to the powerless and marginalised?

The angels announce the birth of the Messiah not to the mayor or the high priests, but to lowly shepherds, the dregs of society. The empty tomb is found by women, who were not even allowed to be witnesses in judicial trials. And here, at Jacob’s Well, a woman with five ex-husbands and a live-in lover is the primary recipient of the Good News of Christ.

Better yet, this woman spreads the word to the people of her community, and they are persuaded by her—a socially marginalised woman, pretty much as low a status as you could occupy in that time—that this foreign Jew is the Messiah.

The gospel of John is giving us the abbreviated version of the story. What made the testimony of this socially worthless woman so potent that people hostile to Judaism would believe that this Galilean Jew was the Messiah?

Jacob’s Well still exists, and The Southern Cross’ Pilgrimage of the Peacemakers, led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin in February, visited the place.

It is now in the crypt of a Greek Orthodox church in Nablus. Pilgrims don’t come here a lot, so a Muslim custodian, Jamal, unlocked the church for us.

Jamal was pleased to see us. He presented the archbishop with a gift and gave him a big hug. It was a fine moment: A Catholic archbishop and a Muslim embracing inside a Greek Orthodox church.

All we needed was a rabbi to join the scene.

We can be certain that this was indeed the place of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman.

The well was Shechem’s only source of water. Christian veneration here goes back to 333 AD at the latest, when the Bordeaux Pilgrim described a baptismal pool which took water from the well.

And if a place was important to the story of our faith, and veneration goes back to the earliest time that churches were allowed to be built, then chances are good that this is indeed the authentic site.

The attractive church covering Jacob’s Well was completed in 2007, replacing an older chapel.

That chapel was the site of tragedy.

In 1979 a group of Jewish extremists from an illegal settlement near Nablus murdered the Orthodox monk, Archimandrite Philoumenos, who was taking care of the holy site. Before he was killed, the monk was tortured in an unsuccessful effort to force him to renounce his faith.

The Israeli authorities knew the killers, but nobody ever stood trial for the murder. One of them, a US citizen, was quickly sent home.

It is not unusual for churches to be attacked by Jewish radicals, who rarely, if ever, are prosecuted for their crimes.

In Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee we observed the extensive damage from an arson attack committed in June 2015 on the Benedictine

of the Roman city—the forum (where the apostles preached), colonnades, amphitheatre, shops— still exist. The Roman hippodrome is still waiting to be excavated.

Sebastia once held the remains of St John the Baptist, which were burnt in around 362 during the reign of Emperor Julian the Apostate. A Byzantine cathedral, later further developed by the Crusaders, was built to keep the urn of John’s ashes; it was the second-largest church in the Holy Land.

After the Islamic conquest of 1192 it became a mosque, dedicated to Nabi Yahya (meaning the Prophet John). That mosque, which has been remodeled over the centuries, is still in use.

A local tradition places the infamous banquet of Herod Antipas and the beheading of John in Sebastia, but historians place the execution at Machaerus, near the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, as recorded by first-century historian Josephus Flavius.

Still, the Byzantine Christians built a church on the acropolis of Sebastia, where tradition says John was beheaded, near to Jezebel’s old palace and the temple. The ruins of that church also still exist—defaced with anti-Christian graffiti by Jewish extremists when we visited it.

church of the Multiplication by Jewish terrorists (even their own government calls them that), which injured two people.

The last I heard, three people were charged with the crime; there is no news on a trial.

Wonderland of ruins

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nother Samarian site worth a visit is Sebastia, previously known as the city of Samaria, with its ruins that span a period of 10 000 years.

The city was destroyed by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, and again by the Maccabean leader John Hyrcanus in 108 BC. The Roman general Pompey rebuilt it in 63 BC and King Herod expanded it, renaming it Sebastia in honour of Emperor Augustus (Sebastia is the Greek version of his name).

It is here that Herod had his wife Mariamne and two of his sons killed. And it is that Roman city in which the Apostle Philip went to preach so successfully that Peter and John were sent there to join him in evangelising the people (Acts 8:5, 14).

They would have seen a wealthy city, where King Herod built a pagan temple adjacent to the ancient palace of Ahab and Jezebel.

The ruins of both, as well as those

Guide Rimon Makhlouf explains the ancient Roman forum of Sebastia in which the apostles Philip, Peter and John preached. (Photo: Irene dos Reis)

O

ur group of pilgrims saw many ancient stones, but our concern was also with the Living Stones: the Christians of the Holy Land.

A Christian pilgrimage should serve as a concrete sign of solidarity with that fast-diminishing community which feels it has been forgotten by the rest of the Church.

Where possible, a pilgrimage group should use Christian service providers, and definitely Christian guides. Using non-Christian guides on a pilgrimage by definition diminishes the faith journey. And it serves as an explicit statement of not being in solidarity with the Christians of the Holy Land.

Our Palestinian brothers and sisters in faith depend on pilgrim tourism. Almost every Christian family has at least one member who works in the tourism industry.

So we were delighted to be spending a night in Taybeh, the last 100% Christian village in the Holy Land.

Jesus knew the village as Ephraim (the Ophrah of Joshua 18:23), and he went there with his disciples after the raising of Lazarus (Jn 11:54).

The village—it was renamed by the Muslim conqueror Saladin—is clean and modern, with an attractive, brand-new hotel attached to a brewery which produces the outstanding range of Taybeh beers.

The hotel, the brewery and lately a winery are run by the Khoury family, Orthodox Christians who operated successful businesses in the United States but returned to Taybeh to help invigorate the village’s economy—despite the hardships and aggravation of the occupation.

In common with the Christian community of the Holy Land, the people of Taybeh, just over a thousand of them, see themselves as bridge-builders between the three Abrahamic religions, representing a vision of God’s people living together in peace.

Taybeh beer’s catchy slogan is “Taste the Revolution”—a revolution that is not one of conflict and conquest but of a vision of peace.

Next week: Bethlehem

A 100% Christian village

10

The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

CHURCH

How my parish got to talk about race In their recent pastoral letter, the bishops of Southern Africa encouraged an open dialogue on race. FATHER PADDy NOONAN OFM recalls his good experience in fostering racial healing in his formerly white parish.

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S apartheid was ending, white Christians saw new challenges emerging in their churches, in their communities, in their Sunday assemblies and congregations.

The committed white Christians were faced with questions: What do we do when Catholics of another race begin to worship in our hitherto white parish? How can we become a healing parish?

How do we receive “strangers” into our home? How do we prevent unintentional slights and racism to colour our conversations?

And how do we articulate, understand and explain white privilege from the past as a springboard to moving on?

When I, as a Franciscan priest, was transferred from a black disadvantaged parish to the formerly white town of Vereeniging in the late 1990s, I began to feel a need for greater integration, fellowship, communion and communication.

I discovered I wasn’t alone. It had

been done before in the Church— almost 2 000 years ago!

Most Christians know that the instant dramatic effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the apostles was that “they began to speak in foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech”. We are told that there were at least 16 nationalities or ethnic groups present at that first Pentecost to hear the apostles speak in their own language.

These are the realities of reconciliation in early Christian history.

Multiculturalism has clearly been a fact of this history for two millennia. Christianity is a multi-ethnic religion, born in the non-European cultures of the Middle East, the crossroads of ancient empires and civilisations and the stage props for our salvation.

But today, two millennia later?

How do we South Africans go about healing one another today after 40 years of mental conditioning by apartheid?

The psychotherapist Diane Salter wrote last year: “What I have witnessed in gender reconciliation workshops is the healing that comes from men and women facing each other in an engagement of truth telling, deep listening and forgiveness—of both self and other.

“This is what we need between blacks and whites. Let us not go our separate ways—let us engage honestly, robustly and generously with each other. This is the real

The

In order to talk about race, Fr Noonan’s parishioners first had to examine their “dangerous memories”. transformation we need if we are all to heal” (Mail & Guardian, January 23-29, 2015).

As Christians we recall that St Paul and the apostles took action when faced with demographic ten-

Southern Cross

Pilgrimage to the Canonisation of

Mother Teresa of Kolkata

sions. They made a plan.

Sure there were those in the congregation who didn’t want anything to do with Romans, Greeks or Jews and wanted them to stay with their own people.

They found mixing difficult. Nevertheless, the early saints went ahead with transformation because they had God on their side.

After prayer and thought I decided to try something in my parish in Vereeniging. I knew that Paul and Peter, after his own conversion (Acts 9 and 10) from racism, would support me.

The plan was to raise and deepen awareness and sensitivity to living in a multi-cultural society, in a racially diverse congregation.

I wasn’t satisfied that different cultural groups should meet in the pews on Sunday morning and just politely acknowledge one another.

There was more to a faith community than that, I believed. I felt drawn to reconciliation rather than assimilation.

T

Rome & Assisi 2 - 11 September 2016

Spiritual Director:

Fr Emil Blaser OP

Contact Gail at info@fowlertours.co.za or 076 352-3809 or 021 551-3923 www.fowlertours.co.za/motherteresa

o do this I felt I had to open eyes to past history, to prise open hearts formerly closed to the Christian understanding of fellowship—to help people to face some unruly demons, the residue of the sin of apartheid.

I concluded that families of different cultures meeting at church on Sunday mornings were ready to deepen dialogue and relationships in their parish community. To be mentored into cohesion, if not reconciliation.

So in Vereeniging we started what we called the “Rainbow Circle”. It became a forum wherein our different racial groups could explore for the first time, in receptive non-judgmental atmospheres, their deep-seated, repressed feelings from the past.

Before engaging in a deeper reconciliation, I felt that the different ethnic groups should be secure and comfortable in their own cultural and racial space.

I decided to meet each ethnic group separately so as to eliminate possible feelings of intimidation too early in a mixed group. I wanted to enable them to begin to articulate what they had never articulated up to then—“dangerous memories”—because there was no structure in the parish for such an unusual exercise.

I began to find the locked doors behind which they hid their unwanted pasts. I opened the doors bit by bit and slipped in.

This was not easy, especially for the formerly oppressed. For them some artificial layers of assumed traits, the survivors’ mask, the “colonised” mind (“let’s forget the

past and move on”) had to be dented, penetrated and hopefully peeled away in order to reach the real person originally intended by God. Separate groups, black and white, began to meet me. Soon white parishioners too were able to talk of their bystander positions during apartheid.

The end result was that each group could hear and listen to the other’s unique unspoken fears and attitudes from the past.

Time passed. It became a monthly meeting for the by now amalgamated Rainbow Circle.

Blacks and whites were now sharing on a deep human level. Amazing revelations began to emerge.

Stories of apartheid experiences from both black and white perspectives were aired and listened to with the greatest respect.

I had never known that South African Portuguese had been called “sea k*ffirs” or that the mother of Portuguese anti-apartheid activist and later businesswoman Maria Ramos received hate phone calls in the 1980s. Or that even ten years after the end of apartheid, thousands of people of colour continued to be daily victims of racial insensitivity and slights—even in Catholic parishes during Mass!

Many were moved and shed tears. Humility surfaced. Healing began.

The Rainbow Circle began to influence the broader parish. The members were personally reaching out to others and inviting them to come along.

The community began to experience a new spirit of understanding and sensitivity to one another.

The services took on a richer tone.

The liturgy committee became more diversified and creative. And the choir became more multi-lingual. Our Sunday Mass was now in English, Portuguese, SeSotho and IsiZulu.

The faithful were coming to a shared viewpoint of the past, based on genuine knowledge of what really happened.

Organised bus tours to Johannesburg’s Apartheid Museum were now part of the way forward for creating an informed parish.

People were facing themselves in comfort. Now parishioners could talk easily about the past without feelings of guilt. They could even tell “race jokes” and laugh together. They had found common humanity. They could face the future with hope.

Thank you Paul, the apostles and the early Christian saints for showing the way! n Fr Noonan is a Franciscan priest and author. He currently serves in Boksburg.

The Southern Cross, April 6 to April 12, 2016

CLASSIFIEDS

Sr Bernadette O’Brien OP

D

OMINICAN Sister Bernadette O’Brien died on February 28, a few months after having been diagnosed with cancer.

Born in Cork, Ireland, she came from a large family of ten children, half of whom dedicated their life to God as religious.

At a young age she entered the novitiate in Bushey Heath, England, as a Newcastle Dominican, and gave herself unreservedly to her calling to become a true Dominican dedicated to prayer, study and the education of children.

Sr Bernadette came to South Africa in 1960 where she taught in many of the order’s schools.

She was a conscientious and dedicated teacher and a passionate catechist.

She gave herself wholeheart-

edly to planning and giving retreats to children, making sure they were grounded in true Christian values and morals.

Her sense of humour as well as her musical talents enabled her greatly in her work.

Liturgical Calendar Year C – Weekdays Cycle Year 2 Sunday April 10, 3rd Sunday of Easter Acts 5:27-32, 40-41, Psalms 30:2, 4-6, 11-13, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19 Monday April 11, St Stanislaus Acts 6:8-15, Psalms 119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30, John 6:22-29 Tuesday April 12, St Zeno of Verona Acts 7:51--8:1, Psalms 31:3-4, 6-8, 17, 21, John 6:30-35 Wednesday April 13, St Martin I Acts 8:1-8, Psalms 66:1-7, John 6:3540 Thursday April 14 Acts 8:26-40, Psalms 66:8-9, 1617, 20, John 6:4451 Friday April 15 Acts 9:1-20, Psalms 117:1-2, John 6:5259 Pope St Martin I Saturday April 16 Acts 9:31-42, Psalms 116:12-17, Psalms 116:12-17 Sunday April 17, 4th Sunday of Easter Acts 13:14, 43-52, Psalms 100:1-3, 5, Revelation 7:9, 14-17, John 10:27-30

Southern CrossWord solutions SOLUTIONS TO 701 ACROSS: 3 Sanhedrin, 8 Imam, 9 Desecrate, 10 Sorrow, 11 Asset, 14 Largo, 15 Nile, 16 Rages, 18 Thug, 20 Wheel, 21 Muses, 24 Potato, 25 Damnation, 26 Clan, 27 Unmarried.

DOWN: 1 Dissolute, 2 Sacrarium, 4 Anew, 5 Heeds, 6 Darken, 7 Iota, 9 Donor, 11 Argus, 12 Timetable, 13 Hell-bound, 17 Swoon, 19 Guinea, 22 Enter, 23 Warn, 24 Pole.

When Sr Bernadette retired from teaching in the classroom, she continued helping in the religious department at St Catherine’s Dominican School in Germiston.

Her plans for her retiring years were not to be, however. In October Sr Bernadette was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal cancer and God took her to himself on February 28.

Her Requiem Mass and internment took place at Marian House, attended by her family, friends and colleagues. Her sister Mary and brother-in-law Tom came from Cork.

Sister’s brother, Fr Teddy O’Brien MSC from England, was the chief celebrant, assisted by nine other priests.

Sr Patricia Dunne OP

Our bishops’ anniversaries This week we congratulate: 10 April: Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg on the 17th anniversary of his ordination as Bishop of Bloemfontein 15 April: Auxiliary Bishop-Elect Duncan Tsoke of Johannesburg on his 52nd birthday

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)

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.

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.

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.

CLASSIFIEDS

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.

DEATHS

DA SILVA—Mary. Died on March 25. Indeed a privilege to have known this truly amazing woman. Rest in peace dearest Mary.

Elizabeth Hutton

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.

O MOST beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendour of Heaven, blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin, assist me in my necessity.

O Star of the Sea, help me and show me where you are, Mother of God. Queen of heaven and earth I humbly beseech you from the bottom of my heart to succour me in my necessity. There is none who can withstand your power, O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Holy Mary, I place this cause in your hands. “Say this prayer for 3 consecutive days and then publish.

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.

ST. KIZITO CHILDREN’S PROGRAMME St. Kizito Children’s Programme (SKCP) is a community-based response to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children, established through the Good Hope Development Fund in 2004 in response to the Church’s call to reach out to those in need. Operating as a movement within the Archdiocese of Cape Town, SKCP empowers volunteers from the target communities to respond to the needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) living in their areas.

The SKCP volunteers belong to Parish Groups that are established at Parishes in target communities. Through the St. Kizito Movement, the physical, intellectual, emotional and psycho-social needs of OVCs are met in an holistic way. Parish Groups provide children and families with a variety of essential services, while the SKCP office provides the groups with comprehensive training and on-going support.

In order to continue its work, SKCP requires on-going support from generous donors. Funds are needed to cover costs such as volunteer training and support, emergency relief, school uniforms and children’s excursions. Grants and donations of any size are always appreciated. We are also grateful to receive donations of toys, clothes and blankets that can be distributed to needy children and families.

If you would like to find out more about St. Kizito Children’s Programme, or if you would like to make a donation, please contact Wayne Golding on 021 782 2880 or 082 301 9385 Email info@stkizito.org.za. Donations can also be deposited into our bank account: ABSA Branch: Claremont, 632005; Account Name: St Kizito Children’s Programme ; Account Number: 4059820320 This advertisement has been kindly sponsored

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

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

THANKS be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, For all the benefits thou hast won for me, For all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, Friend, and Brother, May I know thee more clearly, Love thee more dearly, And follow thee more nearly, For ever and ever.

THANKS

SAINT JUDE: Thank you St Jude for keeping us and our belongings safe during our recent long road trip. I promised on our return to let your name be known.

Amen. D.J.S. (PE) THANK YOU to St Jude for prayers answered. SS.

LONDON: Protea House.

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

CAPE TOWN: Strandfontein. Fully equipped selfcatering two bedroom apartment, with parking, sleeps four. R600 per/night.

Paul 083 553 9856, vivilla@telkomsa.net 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 The

Word of the Week Conclave: The gathering of the world’s Catholic cardinals, after the death of a pope, to elect a new pope. Only cardinals under the age of 80 are allowed into a conclave under current Church rules.

11

Southern Cross

Published independently by the Catholic Newspaper and Publishing Co since 1920

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SCREEN PRINTING

Commemorate your special occasion, PRINT your logo and event on T-SHIRTS! Contact Alledene Cupido for a quotation at PRISON CARE AND SUPPORT NETWORK Monday to Friday between 09:00-13:00.

021 697-4174 (Tel/Fax) or 086 628 4499 e-mail: prisoncare@mweb.co.za WE OFFER REASONABLE RATES!

Tony Wyllie & Co. Catholic Funeral Home

Personal and Dignified 24-hour service 469 Voortrekker Rd, Maitland Tel: 021 593 8820 48 Main Rd, Muizenberg Tel: 021 788 3728 Member of the NFDA

10 Tuin Plein, Cape Town, 8001 Tel: (021) 465 5007 Fax: (021) 465 3850

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The Southern Cross is a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations of South Africa. Printed by Paarl Coldset (Pty) Ltd, 10 Freedom Way, Milnerton.

Published by the proprietors, The Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co Ltd, at the company’s registered office, 10 Tuin Plein, Cape Town, 8001.

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4th Sunday of Easter: April 17 Readings: Acts 13:14, 43-52, Psalm 100:1-3, 5, Revelation 7:9, 14-17, John 10:27-30

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HE Easter joy that you and I are meant to be experiencing just now does not come to us because life is comfortable or easy; it comes because God is (after all, and whatever it may feel like) the Lord of all the earth.

In the first reading for next Sunday, Paul has delivered his first sermon, in the synagogue in Antioch, and it has been quite successful: “Many of the Jews and the God-fearing proselytes became disciples of Paul and Barnabas, who spoke to them and urged them to remain firm in God’s grace.”

But the success does not last long, because Paul’s opponents “were filled with fanaticism, and contradicted what was said by Paul”.

Paul and Barnabas take this as a sign: “Since you do not regard yourselves as fit for eternal life, look: we are turning to the Gentiles.” This gives immense joy to the Gentiles in Antioch, and “they glorified the word of the Lord”.

As a result persecution arises, and “they expelled Paul and Barnabas from their territory”. But notice the effect that it has on the two apostles: in an ancient gesture, “they shook the dust from their feet”; but also there is a much more positive effect: “The disciples

S outher n C ross

God’s love lasts forever were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” God is, after all, in charge.

The psalm, as always, simply wishes to give expression to this profound truth: “Sing to the Lord, all the earth”, it begins, “serve the Lord with joy, come into his presence in exultation, know that the Lord, he is God, and he made us.”

There is immense joy here: “For the Lord is good; his love is for ever, and his truth is from generation to generation.”

This joy should stay with us, no matter what difficulties we may meet. For “we are his people, and the flock of his shepherding”.

Those difficulties include, make no mistake about it, the possibility of martyrdom.

But we are not to be alarmed by that possibility. Instead, in the second reading, we are invited to see ourselves as part of “a great

crowd, whom no one could count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing before the Throne and before the Lamb, wearing white garments and with palmbranches in their hands”.

These are identified as “those who come from the great persecution, and have washed their garments, and whitened them in the Lamb’s blood”.

There is no denial of the likelihood of persecution; but being present at the heavenly liturgy offers us encouragement, and the insight that “The One Sitting on the Throne will pitch his tent upon them”, and protect them, and then (a lovely image, this): “The Lamb that is in the middle of the Throne will shepherd them and guide them upon fountains of the water of life; and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

That “shepherd” image continues into

The triumph of goodness T

Jesus was physically deft and elusive, but rather that the word of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God, and power of God can never be captured, held captive, or ultimately killed.

They are adept. They can never be held captive, can never be killed, and even when seemingly they are killed, the stone that entombs them always eventually rolls back and releases them. Goodness continues to resurrect from every sort of grave.

And it is this, the constant resurrection of goodness, not that of viciousness and evil, which speaks the deepest truth about our world and our lives.

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he Jewish-Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, gives a poignant testimony of this.

He had as a young boy been in a Nazi death camp, but what he remembered most afterwards from this experience was not the injustice, cruelty and death that he saw there, but rather some acts of goodness, kindness and altruism he witnessed amid that evil.

After the war it left him wanting to read the lives of saints rather than biographies of war. The appearance of goodness fascinated him.

To his mind, evil is explicable, but goodness? Who can explain it? What is its source? Why does it spring up over and over again all over the earth, and in every kind of situation?

It springs up everywhere because God’s

Conrad

HE stone which rolled away from the tomb of Jesus continues to roll away from every sort of grave. Goodness cannot be held, captured, or put to death.

It evades its pursuers, escapes capture, slips away, hides out, even leaves the churches sometimes—but forever rises, again and again, all over the world.

Such is the meaning of the resurrection.

Goodness cannot be captured nor killed. We see this already in the earthly life of Jesus.

There are a number of passages in the gospels which give the impression that Jesus was somehow highly elusive and difficult to capture. It seems that until Jesus consents to his own capture, nobody can lay a hand on him.

We see this played out a number of times. Early on in his ministry, when his own townsfolk get upset with his message and lead him to the brow of a hill to hurl him to his death, we are told that “he slipped through the crowd and went away”.

Later when the authorities try to arrest him we are told simply that “he slipped away”. And, in yet another incident, when he is in the temple area and they try to arrest him, the text simply says that he left the temple area and “no one laid a hand upon him because his hour had not yet come”.

Why the inability to take him captive?

Was Jesus so physically adept and elusive that no one could imprison him?

These stories of his “slipping away” are highly symbolic. The lesson is not that

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Sunday Reflections

next Sunday’s Gospel, and Jesus as the “Real Shepherd”: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life.”

God is in charge here, and nothing can be better than that: “No one can snatch them from the hand of the Father.”

Then comes the best news of all: “The Father and I are one.” There is no substitute for this central fact of our Easter season; God is in charge, and it was God who raised Jesus from the dead.

So no amount of persecution can possibly distract us from our basic task of proclaiming the Gospel, no matter how much anger it evokes.

We can simply take our rest in the fact that Jesus is “giving [us] eternal life” and we “shall not be destroyed for ever, and no one shall snatch [us] from his hand”.

“What the Father has given me”, he proclaims, “is greater than everything.”

There is every reason to rejoice now, no matter how difficult life may seem to be.

Southern Crossword #701

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final Reflection

goodness and power lie at the source of all being and life. This is what is revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. What the resurrection reveals is that the ultimate source of all that is, of all being and life, is gracious, good, and loving.

Moreover, it also reveals that graciousness, goodness, and love are the ultimate power inside reality. They will have the final word and they will never be captured, derailed, killed, or ultimately ignored.

They will break through, ceaselessly, forever.

In the end, too, as Imre Kertesz suggests, they are more fascinating than evil.

And so we are in safe hands. No matter how bad the news on a given day, no matter how threatened our lives are on a given day, no matter how intimidating the neighbourhood or global bully, no matter how unjust and cruel a situation, and no matter how omnipotent are anger and hatred—love and goodness will reappear and ultimately triumph.

Jesus taught that the source of all life and being is benign and loving. He promised too that our end will be benign and loving.

In the resurrection of Jesus, God showed that God has the power to deliver on that promise. Goodness and love will triumph!

The ending of our story, both that of our world and that of our individual lives, is already written—and it is a happy ending!

We are already saved. Goodness is guaranteed. Kindness will meet us. We only need to live in the face of that wonderful truth.

They couldn’t arrest Jesus until he himself allowed it. They put his dead body in a tomb and sealed it with a stone, but the stone rolled away. His disciples abandoned him in his trials, but they eventually returned more committed than ever.

They persecuted and killed his first disciples, but that only served to spread his message. The churches have been unfaithful sometimes, but God just slipped away from those particular temple precincts.

God has been declared dead countless time, but yet a billion people have just celebrated Easter.

ACROSS

3. Hand-rinse for old Jewish councillors (9) 8. Fatima mansion holds a Muslim (4) 9. Deter case of committing sacrilege (9) 10. Grief (6) 11. Tessa returns with what’s useful (5) 14. Handel’s slow movement (5) 15. Egyptian flower out of line (4) 16. Angry outbursts (5) 18. Ruffian found in hospital in the harbour vessel (4) 20. Did St Catherine invent it? (5) 21. The goddesses of the arts (5) 24. To top a vegetable (6) 25. Doomed state (9) 26. Tight family group (4) 27. “Maid” rerun could be for old maid (9)

DOWn

1. Issue dolt has with loose morals (9) 2. Curia mars sacristy basin (9) 4. Afresh (4) 5. Pays attention (5) 6. Noah’s vessel in mixed end will grow dim (6) 7. Greek letter about very little (4) 9. He gives to a good cause (5) 11. Mythological creature with 100 eyes (5) 12. Schedule (9) 13. On the way to Perdition (4-5) 17. Pass out west soon (5) 19. Kind of fowl costing old gold coin (6) 22. Register for the competition (5) 23. Sound the alarm (4) 24. It could be extremely north or south (4)

Solutions on page 11

CHURCH CHUCKLE

O

ne Sunday, a young child was “acting up” during Mass.

The parents did their best to maintain some sense of order in the pew but were losing the battle.

Finally, the father picked the little fellow up and walked sternly down the aisle on his way out.

Just before reaching the safety of the foyer, the little one called loudly to the congregation: “Pray for me! Pray for me!”

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