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The

S outher n C ross

September 28 to October 4, 2016

Reg no. 1920/002058/06

Is the bishop’s cross too heavy to bear?

Page 19

no 5000

www.scross.co.za

Colour in your faith: New fad for adults

dawn nortje (right) sells The Southern Cross every Sunday after Mass as people are leaving all Saints church in Brackenfell, Cape Town. She is seen here with an unnamed reader. Ms nortje is one of many people around the country who volunteer to sell the Catholic weekly at the church door—along with priests mentioning articles in that week’s edition from the pulpit, the Southern Cross sellers are the best way of promoting the newspaper. if somebody sells The Southern Cross in your parish, please send us a photo of them doing so for publication— it’s our way of thanking our many co-workers in the social communications apostolate.

(Photo: Eugene Jackson)

Page 22

By Mandla ZiBi

F

Centre after the provincial health department cancelled the contract with the institution.

The deaths sparked calls for the MEC of health in Gauteng, Qedani Mahlangu, to resign or be fired.

In the statement, Bishop Gabuza welcomed the launch of an investigation by the national health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi into the whole process of moving the patients, including their deaths.

The bishop called on the national health department to ensure that “the investigation should include an urgent assessment of the current standards of clinical care and the respect of patient rights in the NGOs where the patients were transferred”, adding that “to save lives, urgent remedial action should be taken if the services are below the required standards”.

Bishop Gabuza urged that the results of the investigation be made public, saying that the Continued on page 2

Canonisation pilgrimage in pictures

Page 20

Archbishops hail Southern Cross

By Mandla ZiBi

T Bishop slams ‘death sentence for the poor’ OLLOWING reports that 36 psychiatric patients had died from undisclosed causes within four months of being moved by Gauteng health authorities from a secure care centre to local nongovernmental organisations, the chairman of the bishops’ Justice & Peace Commission said that putting profit before the health of people iss “a death sentence for the poor”.

“A health system that puts profit before people, and without adequate measures for cost control, is both unsustainable for the country and a death sentence for the poor,” said Bishop Abel Gabuza of Kimberley in a statement.

“The lives of the mentally ill should therefore be considered to be more important than fiscal efficiency and profit making,” he said.

The victims were part of a group of patients moved from Life Healthcare’s Esidimeni

R8,00 (incl VaT RSa)

WO archbishops have hailed The Southern Cross as a unifier of the Catholic faithful throughout its 96 years of uninterrupted publication.

South Africa’s only weekly Catholic newspaper is publishing its 5 000th issue today, having appeared every week since it first came out on Saturday, October 16, 1920.

“Five-thousand uninterrupted editions of The Southern Cross—what an important milestone to celebrate! Through wars, discrimination, oppression and economic hardship, the Catholic voice has been heard and the Gospel proclaimed,” Archbishop Stephen Brislin, president of the Southern African CatholicsBishops’ Conference (SACBC), said in a congratulatory note.

“This achievement has been possible only through the sacrifice and dedication of many people, whose love for God and the Church gave them the passion to unite Catholics throughout our conference area.”

Archbishop William Slattery of Pretoria, the SACBC’s spokesman, concurred with Archbishop Brislin on the unifying role played by the newspaper.

“Our whole Catholic community must surely congratulate The Southern Cross on its 5 000th issue. It has never failed to appear week after week since its first printing in 1920. In a broken, polarised and fragmented

world, The Southern Cross has united the Catholics of South Africa in a bond of belonging and closeness,” he said.

“In a Church commissioned by the Lord to communicate truth and life to the world , The Southern Cross has been a faithful and courageous messenger.”

The prelate likened The Southern Cross to an Irish Catholic tradition from the 5th and 6th centuries when some of the founders of parishes did not build churches. “They simply left a bell. This bell was a voice calling the faithful to become a community of faith. The Southern Cross has been a bell uniting our scattered communities from the Cape to Limpopo to share their common faith.”

He observed that the newspaper “has looked on the world with profound understanding and sincere admiration, with the intention not of condemning but of strengthening it,” Archbishop Slattery said.

“It has been an exercise in listening as well as speaking. It has allowed generations of Catholics to listen and be enriched by each other’s faith. It has assured Catholics that we are part of the great worldwide family of saints and sinners. Each week we have awaited the paper like a letter from home,” he said.

“To the editor and staff of The Southern Cross; we applaud you and invoke the Lord’s blessing on your important work of evangelisation.”

2

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

LOCAL

ZimCatholicSA congress urges all to acts of mercy

By FaRayi MaTOndO

S

OME 700 people, including two bishops, attended the ZimCatholicSA 2016 congress, the second after that in 2013.

Held at St Anne’s Retreat Centre in Klerksdorp, the conference took its theme from a quote by Pope Francis: “In this Year of Mercy, a little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.”

In his opening remarks, newlyappointed chaplain Fr Jerome Nyathi reiterated that wonderful things come in small packages. He told attendees that there is wisdom and progress in doing small things which make a difference in life.

“We meet at a time when our motherland Zimbabwe is undergoing crisis after crisis, and stress and uncertainties are written on the citizens’ faces,” said Fr Nyathi.

“May a little prayer be a drop in the ocean and make a difference and receive God’s mercy.”

The congress was attended by Bishops Victor Phalana of Klerksdorp and Michael Bhasera of Masvingo, president of the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

Bishop Michael Bhasera with youths during the silver jubilee celebrations event at the ZimCatholicSa year of Mercy congress.

Speakers from South Africa and Zimbabwe challenged the audience towards deeper reflection.

Among the guests were Frs Brian Mhlanga OP, S’milo Mngadi, Mandlekhosi Ndlovu, Thomas Masemula, Reki Mashayamombe, and Cletus Onwudiwe, Monica Mureriwa from the Catholic University of Zimbabwe also attended, as did some Zimbabwean sodality leaders.

Isaac Moyo, ambassador of

Zimbabwe, represented the government of Zimbabwe.

“Hold onto your faith; it’s your job, duty and responsibility to support those back home, Change is coming. God is doing something in Zimbabwe, we [South Africans] feel your pain,” Bishop Phalana told the congress.

“It’s not easy living in exile: no bursaries, harsh conditions, xenophobic situations… In the midst of all these things, many Zimbabweans have continued charity works in South Africa, continued to show mercy”, the bishop said.

Dr Shingirirai Mutanga, ZimCatholicSA chair, said that by embarking on a spiritual journey, such as attending the inspiring congress, God would open participants’ hearts, giving spiritual nourishment and growth.

The programme included celebration of the 25-year anniversary of Bishop Bhasera’s episcopal ordination in 1991.

Seven children were baptised during the congress, and new members were received into the sodalities of St Anne’s, St Monica, Immaculate Conception, Sacred Heart of Jesus and Missionary Holy Childhood.

Fr Peter-John Pearson, director of the Catholic Parliamentary liaison Office (CPlO), with anC parliamentary chief whip Jackson Mthembu, who addressed leaders of civil society at a luncheon in Cape Town, hosted by the CPlO and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. in a candid talk and question-andanswer session, Mr Mthembu acknowledged that the results of the local elections in august had shocked the ruling party, which is now consulting with its branches to determine points of failure. Mr Mthembu, who was raised Catholic, emphasised the need of civil society to engage with government and parliament, saying that this can influence policy-making.

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Bishop slams the death of 36 patients in Gauteng Continued from page 1 death of 36 patients in a period of four months was a matter of public interest requiring a greater level of transparency. He also added that those found negligent should be “held to account”.

“While awaiting the results of the investigation, we wish to register our deep concern that the Gauteng health department did not heed the warnings from civil society and families [of the patients] that cancelling the contract with Esidimeni Centre and the transfer of patients should not be rushed,” he said.

Bishop Gabuza found it “morally unacceptable” that patients were transferred without their clinical files and that some families were reportedly not informed of where their relatives would be transferred to.

Noting that the health department had terminated its agreement with Esidimeni because it was costing it R11 343 a month to maintain each patient—a total cost of almost R324 million a year—the bishop underlined the need to address the crisis of rising health costs in South Africa.

He warned the authorities not to use “the pretext of deinstitutionalisation of mental health care” in order to avoid its constitutional responsibilities to provide adequate care to the mentally ill.

“As a society, we should never forget that the lives of the mentally ill are precious before God. We shall continue to speak on behalf of the most vulnerable in our country, including the mentally sick in our country,” Bishop Gabuza said.

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LOCAL

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

3

Cardinal: Use prayer against addiction

By Mandla ZiBi

T

HE archbishop of Durban has urged parishes to use all forms of prayer in “creative” ways as part of a nationwide campaign to fight drug and alcohol addiction.

Writing in his archdiocese’s newsletter, Cardinal Wilfrid Napier reported on the latest practical steps taken so far in an ongoing initiative against drug and alcohol addiction, which he earlier this year described as the “new oppressor of our people”.

“I am asking parishes to be creative. Organise prayer vigils; holy hours; days of fasting and abstinence from meat on Fridays, etc,” the cardinal wrote.

“Other initiatives should include ‘Healing from Addiction’ in the prayers of the faithful; personal testimonies by those recovering from addiction; making addiction the focus of your faith and gospel sharing groups’ meetings; and including [anti-addiction] prayers in your daily family prayers,” Cardinal Napier wrote.

“When we are dealing with a devious demon like alcohol or drugs, we must base whatever we are going to do on prayer. Isn’t this what Jesus told his disciples? [Did he not say]

‘Come on guys! This kind of demon can be cast out only by prayer and fasting’?”

His insight into the power of prayer as a weapon against addiction sprang from an earlier conversation with the department of health as he and the newly formed Catholic Drug Response Committee (CDRC) explored the possibility of setting up a drug treatment facility.

According to Cardinal Napier, they became aware of potential obstacles, such as the long formal process of registering a facility; the need for qualified staff; being held liable should something go wrong during treatment; and the substantial cost of the whole enterprise.

“Now I understand why those in charge of a rehabilitation centre in Italy called Cenacolo advised some ladies from Christ the King parish in Wentworth [who were keen to start something] with these words: ‘Go home and pray. When you have done that, you will know the way!’ ” said the cardinal.

“I am confident that if all parishes adopt some of the above recommendations as a prayer and fasting campaign, it won’t be long before the Holy Spirit inspires and guides us to make the right decisions.”

Johannesburg parish to celebrate week of St Francis

T

HE parish of the Immaculate Conception in Rosebank, Johannesburg, will offer a programme of celebration to mark the feast day of St Francis of Assisi on October 4.

On the eve of the feast, at 18:00 on October 3, there will be Mass followed by the Transitus, an interactive reflection on the joyful death of St Francis—his passage from this life to the next—as celebrated by Franciscans the world over.

At the weekend Masses of October 8-9 the offertory collection will be for homeless and poor people and for good-quality new and used clothing or cash donations, with a special need for men’s clothing and

shoes. These will be distributed through the Mercy Sisters’ shelters and the Society of St Vincent de Paul.

The Children’s Sunday Mass at 8:00 and the 10:30 liturgy will be celebrated by Capuchin Father Kees Thönissen, international director of the Franciscan Damietta Peace Initiative in Africa.

On October 14 the church will host a “The Joy of Love” concert of popular songs—sacred and secular—performed by several choirs. n Tickets are R150 and proceeds will go the Franciscan Damietta Peace Initiative. For tickets e-mail Olivia at oliviacoyle@hotmail.com or phone Peggy on 011 788 5226.

Digital: R385 a year

The members of The Southern Cross' newly-established Editorial advisory Board: (top from left) Fr Chris Chatteris SJ (St Francis Xavier Seminary), Kelsay Correa (communications manager of the Catholic institute of Education), dr nontando Hadebe (St augustine College), Prof derrick Kourie (retired academic, University of Pretoria), Claire Mathieson (communications manager for SouthSouthnorth environmental agency).

(Below): Fr lawrence Mduduzi ndlovu (priest and journalist), Palesa ngwenya (researcher at the Catholic Parliamentary liaison Office), Sr dr Connie O’Brien i.Sch (academic, University of Cape Town), Kevin Roussel (director of Catholic Welfare & development), Fr Paul Tatu CSS (SaCBC communications officer)

Editorial Advisory Board launched STaFF REPORTER

A

NEW Editorial Advisory Board has been established to offer counsel to The Southern

Cross.

The advisory board presently comprises ten members. Its function is to advise the editor and board of directors of The Southern Cross and to act as a resource to improve content.

In cases of complaints about content, some members may be called to mediate.

The idea to set up such a board has been a long time coming, said Southern Cross editor Günther Simmermacher, but the final impetus came from the bishops’ conference.

“In May last year a delegation of The Southern Cross and the board of directors met with the board of the SACBC. A couple of bishops suggested it would be good to have some kind of editorial board to act

Print: R450 a year

Subscribe to The Southern Cross subscriptions@scross.co.za or 021-465-5007

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as a conduit between the bishops and the editor,” Mr Simmermacher recalled.

“I was delighted with that suggestion, because I’ve wanted an advisory board for many years—but we never succeeded in conceptualising it. This gave us the necessary push.”

Over the next months Mr Simmermacher and the board of directors of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company, which publishes The Southern Cross, developed the terms of the Editorial Advisory Board.

“We had to work out what kind of board we wanted,” Mr Simmermacher said.

“Most newspapers have editorial boards that are really just window dressing; that’s virtually the industry standard,” he noted. “But I was keen to have an advisory board of credible people in various fields of competence and of various experi-

ences to offer guidance where needed—and to give criticism when necessary. I think the composition of the inaugural Editorial Advisory Board will accomplish that.”

The advisory board, which has no executive function, is appointed by the editor in consultation with the board of directors.

The communications officer of the SACBC, currently Fr Paul Tatu CSS, serves as an ex officio member.

It is through him that the bishops’ conference may express potential concerns to The Southern Cross.

Mr Simmermacher said he hopes that members of the Editorial Advisory Board will also contribute editorials in areas of their expertise.

These will then be credited to the Editorial Advisory Board.

“This is an important step forward for us, and I am very grateful to the ten people who have kindly agreed to be part of this,” he added.

4

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

INTERNATIONAL

The resurrection ‘has logic’

By JUnnO aROCHO ESTEVES

C

HRISTIANS are called to believe in the logic of the resurrection of the body and not succumb to heresies that reduce it to a mere spiritual experience, Pope Francis said.

When looking towards the future, the uncertainty about what happens after death often can lead to not understanding Christianity’s “logic of the future”, which proclaims that believers will rise again in body and soul like Jesus did, the pope said during a morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

“A spiritualistic piety, a nuanced piety is much easier; but to enter into the logic of the flesh of Christ, this is difficult. And this is the logic of the day after tomorrow. We will resurrect like the risen Christ, with our own flesh,” he said.

In his homily, the pope reflected on St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in which the apostle admonishes some of the early Christian community for saying “there is no resurrection of the dead”.

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty, too, is our preaching; empty, too, your faith,” Paul wrote.

The pope said that, for some, it is difficult to understand and accept the “logic of the future” regarding what happens after death.

The belief that, like Jesus, Christians will experience the resurrection of the body “is not easy”.

“Yesterday’s logic is easy, today’s logic is easy. Tomorrow’s logic is easy: We will all die. But the logic of the day after tomorrow, that is difficult,” he said.

Some Christians “are afraid of the flesh” and may fall prey to “a

certain type of gnosticism” that reduces the resurrection to a purely spiritual experience; a belief that was “the first heresy” denounced by the apostle John, the pope explained.

Believing and having faith that Christ did not rise from the dead “as a ghost” but actually in flesh and blood is “the logic of the day after tomorrow that we find hard to understand”, he said.

While it is a sign of maturity to see the logic of the resurrection, Christians must also pray for the grace to understand it, Pope Francis added.

“You also need the great grace of the Holy Spirit to understand this logic of the day after tomorrow; after the transformation, when he will come and will carry us transformed above the clouds to be with him always. Let us ask the Lord for the grace of this faith.”— CNS

Pope Francis holds a baby as he visits the neonatal unit at San giovanni Hospital in Rome. The visit was part of the pope’s series of Friday works of mercy during the Holy year. (Photo: l’Osservatore Romano/CnS)

Pope’s mercy visit to babies

By Cindy WOOdEn

Two priests murdered in Mexico P By daVid agREn

T

WO priests were kidnapped and killed in the Mexican state of Veracruz, raising the death toll of clergy murdered in Mexico to 14 in less than four years.

Frs Alejo Nabor Jimenez Juarez and Jose Alfredo Juarez de la Cruz were dragged at gunpoint out of Our Lady of Fatima parish in Poza Rica, a Gulf Coast oil city consumed by crime in recent years, the diocese of Papantla confirmed in a statement.

The priests were found a day after their abduction, along the side of a highway with their hands and feet bound. They were beaten and had gunshot wounds.

State officials said that five men participated in the abductions and one of the suspect’s identities was known. Robbery of a church building fund was cited as a motive, Veracruz media outlet Plumas Libres reported.

“In these moments of pain, impo-

tence and tragedy provoked by violence, we raise our prayers to the heavens for the eternal rest of our brothers and implore to the Lord the conversion of the aggressors. We await the clarification of the acts and the application of justice to those responsible,” the Mexican bishops’ conference said.

Violence has struck Veracruz clergy previously. In 2013, two priests in the diocese of Tuxpan were murdered in their parish.—CNS

OPE Francis donned a green hospital gown over his white cassock and entered the neonatal unit of a Rome hospital, peering into incubators, making the sign of the cross and encouraging worried parents.

The trip to the babies’ ward of Rome’s San Giovanni Hospital and then to a hospice were part of a series of Mercy Friday activities Pope Francis has been doing once a month during the Year of Mercy.

By visiting the ailing newborns and the dying on the same day, the Vatican said, Pope Francis “wanted to give a strong sign of the impor-

tance of life from its first moment to its natural end”.

The pope stopped by the emergency room of San Giovanni Hospital before going to the neonatal unit, where 12 little patients were being treated.

At the neonatal unit, the Vatican said, the pope was “welcomed by the surprised personnel” and, like everyone else, put on a gown and followed all the hygiene procedures.

The pope then drove across town to the Villa Speranza hospice, which hosts 30 terminally ill patients, where he went into each of the rooms and greeted each patient. — CNS

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INTERNATIONAL

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

5

Pope in Assisi: Hear Jesus’ cries of thirst

By JUnnO aROCHO ESTEVES

J

Elderly and middle-aged people exercise with wooden dumbbells during an event marking Respect For The aged day in Tokyo. (Photo: Franck Robichon, EPa/CnS)

Bishops call for rejection of ‘rampant ageism’

By ROBERT Hiini

A

USTRALIA’S bishops called on individuals, communities and governments to reject rampant ageism and the toxic attitudes that often accompany concepts such as “intergenerational theft”.

The bishops link Australia’s treatment of the elderly with Western discomfort around dying and point to the looming threat posed by euthanasia and assisted dying in a society that “idealises notions of youthfulness and vitality”.

Calling for a “renewed solidarity among generations, young and old”—not only in wider society but also in the Church—the bishops identify a number of challenges confronting Australia as a country with a rapidly ageing population.

In their statement, “A Place at the Table: Social Justice in an Ageing Society”, the bishops point to recent survey data showing a quarter of people over 50 had experienced some form of age-based discrimination in calling for greater workplace flexibility for older people, and for increased training, particularly in lieu of increased automation.

Writing in a summary message in the report, Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen, social justice council chairman, said stereotypes of older people as “doddering, out of touch or necessarily dependent” were “false and dehumanising”.

“People are not commodities, to be valued only for their productivity or purchasing power,” Bishop Long said in the message. “They are human beings in the fullest sense,

precious in their own right, possessing a dignity that was given them

by God. Furthermore, their wisdom and lived experience are priceless treasures that can enrich our lives.

“Old age will come to us all eventually, and we will need the help and support of others,” he said.

“We must never forget that the older person before us is a spouse, a parent, a brother or sister, a friend, and most importantly, a son or daughter of God. All of us are created in the image and likeness of God and are called to have our rightful place at the table he has prepared.”

Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, the Vatican’s permanent observer to UN agencies in Geneva, indicated the problem of an ageing population is worldwide.

“In a world that is living a critical demographic transformation, the elderly face a number of particular challenges...that need to be addressed urgently,” he said, citing areas such as health care, the right to work, social protection, access to justice, violence and abuse, and in creasing discrimination,” he said.

“Living longer must never be seen as an exception, a burden or a challenge, but rather it must be recognised as the blessing that it is.

Older persons enrich society, and their positive and constructive presence in society is valued,” he said.

“The elderly are a source of wisdom. The quality of a society, of a civilisation, may also be judged by how it treats its elderly and by the place reserved for them in communal life,” he said.—CNS

ESUS’ cry of thirst on the cross is heard today in the cries of innocent victims of war in the world, Pope Francis said.

Christians are called to contemplate Christ in “the voice of the suffering, the hidden cry of the little innocent ones to whom the light of this world is denied”, the pope said at a prayer service in Assisi with other Christian leaders, including Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury.

Far too often the victims of war “encounter the deafening silence of indifference, the selfishness of those annoyed at being pestered, the coldness of those who silence their cry for help with the same ease with which television channels are changed”, the pope said in his meditation.

Arriving in a blue Volkswagen, the pope raised his arms to embrace Patriarch Bartholomew and, together, the two greeted the other religious leaders present. Archbishop Welby, Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch and leaders of the Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist communities.

The pope and After having lunch with a dozen refugees and victims of war, Pope Francis and the Christian leaders went to pray in the lower basilica of St Francis. Mem-

By CaROl glaTZ

P

AULINE Father Gabriele Amorth, an Italian priest renowned for his work in dispelling demons, died at the age of 91.

Fr Amorth began his ministry as an exorcist for the diocese of Rome in 1986 and performed—according to his own estimates—some 70 000 exorcisms or other prayers to liberate people from demonic influence.

He spoke out frequently, warning that while it was rare for a person to be possessed by a demon, the devil’s influence was strong in today’s world, affecting not just individuals but sometimes entire societies.

One reason the devil’s influence was so high today, he said, is that

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bers of other religions went to different locations in Assisi to offer prayers for peace in their own traditions.

In a speech, the pope called on believers of every faith “to confront the great sickness of our time: indifference”.

"It is a virus that paralyses, rendering us lethargic and insensitive, a disease that eats away at the very heart of religious fervour, giving rise to a new and deeply sad paganism: the paganism of indifference,” he said.

Recalling the look on the faces of the refugees he and Patriarch Bartholomew met on the Greek is-

land of Lesbos in April, the pope called on religious believers to not remain indifferent to the suffering of others but instead to be the voice of those unheard.

Patriarch Bartholomew told the religious leaders that the richness of the diversity found within humanity and in the created world at large is something that must be respected and never destroyed.

“Peace comes from mutual knowledge and cooperation,” he said.

The interfaith peace summit marked the 30th anniversary of the first such meeting, called by St John Paul II in Assisi in 1986. —CNS

Vatican exorcist dies

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Pope Francis lights a candle during an interfaith peace gathering outside the basilica of St Francis in assisi, italy. The pope and other religious leaders were attending a peace gathering marking the 30th anniversary of the first peace encounter. (Photo: Paul Haring/CnS)

Christian faith has weakened, replaced in many cases by superstition and an interest in the occult, which he said “open the way to demonic influences”.

Born in Modena, Italy in 1925, the Pauline priest was ordained when he was 28 and was a prolific author, writing a number of books including An Exorcist Explains the Demonic: The Antics of Satan and His Army of Fallen Angels and An Exorcist Tells His Story.

He co-founded the International Association of Exorcists and served as its honorary president until his death.

Fr Amorth started bringing Italian exorcists together in the 1980s in re-

Fr gabriele amorth, who has died.

(Photo: gruppo Editoriale San Paolo/CnS) sponse to an upsurge in interest in Satanism and occult practices.

In a written message to the association the same year, Pope Francis said exorcists demonstrate the love and care of the Church for “those who suffer because of the work of the devil”.—CNS

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6

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

LEADER PAGE

Editor: Günther Simmermacher

5 000 times to be thankful

T

HE publication of our 5 000th edition this week marks a significant milestone for this independent and entirely unsubsidised newspaper.

For almost 96 years—from its first issue on October 16, 1920 onwards—The Southern Cross has appeared every single week, without fail.

For an independent national weekly newspaper in South Africa, this might well be an unparalleled record; it certainly is for a religious weekly. For this, the glory is God’s.

It is an accomplishment for our region’s relatively small Catholic community that it has sustained a weekly newspaper for so long, something which no other Christian denomination has been able to do.

Over the past 96 years, more than 54 million copies of The Southern Cross have been sold. At an estimated average of 4,5 readers per copy, that means the newspaper has been read at least 250 million times.

For many Catholics, The Southern Cross has been and remains an important source of Catholic formation. It can be said that nobody ever became a worse Catholic for reading The Southern Cross.

The newspaper’s influence on and contribution to the local Church has been immense. For example, The Southern Cross was instrumental in the bishops’ campaign to save the Catholic schooling system from obliteration by the apartheid regime in the late 1950s.

In the 1960s, The Southern Cross was the primary source of information about Vatican II, aided by exclusive (and anonymous) articles by Archbishop Denis Hurley.

A more recent example: The Southern Cross played an important role in making known the cause for Bl Benedict Daswa, culminating in his beatification in 2015.

This present issue, in which we look back and also ahead, serves as a tribute to all those who for almost a century have kept The Southern Cross going as an integral part of Catholic life in our region.

This 5 000th edition honours the editors of the past, names like Kelly, Morris, Colgan, McCann, Stubbs, De Beer, Connor and Shackleton; and their lay editors— the men who did the all heavy lifting—like Rowntree, Murray and Donnelly.

This 5 000th edition honours successive business managers— not least the current incumbent, Pamela Davids, who has given 43

years to the newspaper so far— and their loyal staff, some of whom have given decades of their lives to keep the operation going, week after week.

This 5 000th edition honours the many contributors and columnists over the decades, some longserving, with names like Kolbe, Singleton, Coker, Duffy, Hatton, Hurley, Whittle, Hinwood, Williams, King, Duval, Bruyns, Cowan, Ntabeni, Rowland, Ngara and countless others.

This 5 000th edition honours the successive boards of directors whose prudent fiscal management has kept The Southern Cross afloat in often choppy waters: names like Peart, Drew, Coates, Robertson, Pothier, Houghton, Hurly, Lack, Jordan, Moerdyk—and present chair, Rosanne Shields, the third generation of Pothiers to serve on the board.

This 5 000th edition honours our loyal advertisers through the ages. Most find good value in using The Southern Cross as a medium for their marketing; others have advertised as a way of supporting The Southern Cross financially.

The support of our advertisers helps keep The Southern Cross alive, as do the contributions of our readers to the Associates Campaign, whose generosity has helped The Southern Cross survive.

This 5 000th edition honours the many people who over nearly ten decades have helped get The Southern Cross into the hands of their fellow parishioners—those who handle the parcels as they arrive, pin up the posters, sell the newspaper at the church door, and so on.

Their invaluable and crucial contribution to the social communications apostolate is represented in this edition by the photos of Dawn Nortje on the front-page selling The Southern Cross in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago, and on page 7 of the unnamed men selling the newspaper in Durban in 1928.

And, above all, this 5 000th edition honours our loyal readers, many of whom are always ready with an encouraging word. It is a reflection of the love which The Southern Cross inspires that many readers choose to assist the newspaper financially through the Associates Campaign.

For a newspaper like The Southern Cross, that is the greatest reward: to know that it has resided in the hearts of its readers, for 5 000 successive weeks.

This week’s letters page features randomly selected correspondence from our archives. Before the 1950s, The Southern Cross published letters only sporadically; so this collection begins in 1954. To submit letters now, write to editor@scross.co.za or fax 021 465-3850

Objectionable radio serials

M

ANY radio programmes provide entertainment of a harmless nature, but certain of the serial stories which are broadcast are objectionable because of their attitude to Christian marriage.

Stories of this type, where moral turpitude is sentimentalised, cannot fail to have a sinister effect on adolescents and poorly instructed adults.

A protest should be made by all those who disapprove, and sponsors should be warned that unless they provide clean programmes their products will be boycotted.

I understand that many secular as well as religious authorities are becoming alarmed at the high divorce rate in South Africa. How can it be otherwise when children are indoctrinated with the idea that it is permissible to slide out of an unhappy marriage by the simple expedient of the divorce courts?

JF Wright, Cape Town (July 7, 1954)

Clothes at Mass

P

LEASE don’t start a campaign to compel people to wear Sunday suits for Mass. It is dangerous to be too concerned about what people wear at Mass.

When the poor are questioned about missing Sunday Mass, they often excuse themselves by saying they have not proper clothes.

Fr John Coxon, Cape Town (July 16, 1958)

The slide towards fascism in SA

T

HE very real danger of communist infiltration and subversion is being used to intimidate all those who are courageous enough to speak out against specific injustices like house arrest and against the system which breeds them.

What we see in South Africa is a frightening drift towards fascist dictatorship.

Even if world opinion were prepared to tolerate the apartheid system, this would not relieve us, who see it in action every day, of the responsibility to speak out against racial discrimination and the hurt it does to the dignity of our fellow citizens.

It requires an honest appraisal of the situation, a full acceptance of the fact that the present distribution of wealth and power is in-

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Follow St Francis

W

NOTHER Layman” (March 30, 1966) says that some Catholics cannot accustom themselves to the change in the Mass liturgy from Latin to the vernacular.

Perhaps it would help them to overcome their difficulty if they bore in mind the fact that the decisions taken by the Council have been prompted by the Holy Spirit, and that accordingly we are obliged to draw the conclusion that it is now the will of God that Holy Mass be offered in the vernacular.

The vernacular Mass is of great ecumenical importance, and we should do nothing to put stumbling blocks in the way of this pilgrimage to unity by harking back to pre-Council days.

VG Davies, Cape Town (April 13, 1966)

E have been asked to pray for peace, adapting the prayer composed by St Francis; perhaps we would do better if we also followed his example.

St Francis had the “holy Crusaders”; we, and our Church leaders, have the “boys on the border”.

St Francis used the army only to get himself to Damietta, which was at the time under Crusader siege. There he left the army to find his way all alone to the headquarters of the Saracen army.

His courage won the admiration of the sultan, and his request for the custody and care of the places of Christian pilgrimage was granted.

Today, if you visit the Holy Land, you will find Franciscan brothers in their brown habits, and in their custody and reverent care, the holy places—evidence that the sultan kept his word, that all ruling authorities since then have honoured it, and that St Francis kept his side of the bargain.

There is talk of the government easing the ban on whites entering black areas, so maybe we could visit our own Damiettas.

Let us go there with no gifts in our hands, only peace in our hearts.

Then maybe a thousand years hence our children will still be reaping the fruit of our acts.

James Wigley, East London (July 28, 1985)

I

M

tolerable and in direct conflict with Catholic social principles.

The rule of law is necessary to the life of a country if it is to solve its problems peacefully and to develop its full potentiality without lapsing into barbaric nationalism.

It must herefore be fought for on every occasion.

Paul Goller, Johannesburg (June 10, 1962)

Vernacular Mass

‘A

I was ashamed of being white

N one way in particular I consider myself lucky in my parish. In spite of all the forces acting against it in South Africa, we are a multiracial church—black and white making up our Sunday congregation in roughly the same proportion as they make up the population.

I feel that we in our parish have a real opportunity to show the power of the Gospel to overcome manmade tension between the races.

On Good Friday we had a visiting preacher, instead of our parish priest. He reminded the congregation that many of them suffer social injustice because of their race.

He told them that they should accept this so as to imitate the sufferings of Christ.

They should not try to change the world because Christ did not come to change the world (these were his actual words!), but to die on the cross.

Moreover, their suffering would all be made up for by the gift of heaven after they died.

The preacher was a white man.

I am white, and I was ashamed of being white—and I was ashamed of being a Catholic.

Stephanie Gerard, Cape Town (May 17, 1972)

If Jesus prayed, shouldn’t we?

I

individual, directed or private retreats can be arranged for periods of 2-8 days throughout the year. Diocesan, Parish and Church meetings and workshops should be booked well in advance

must we, the people, think and do? Are good works and no prayer enough?

Elizabeth Mkhize, Durban (June 5, 1977)

WAS so surprised to see the letter from Fr Peter Sanders OP (“Lack of prayer and Communism”, May 22, 1997).

First the white missionaries taught us that Jesus loved to pray, and always prayed before any big choice he had to make.

We also learned that Jesus said that we should ask the Father for anything in his name: “Will you give your child a stone if he asks for bread?”

Now here is a priest (Fr Sanders) who uses words like “ridiculous” when he refers to Fr Hinwood’s article on prayer (“Fatima and the Red threat”, May 1, 1977).

Does not Fr Sanders believe that prayer is really necessary to get strength and also to fight the spread of evil?

If Fr Sanders finds it ridiculous to pray and take Communion and ask God to help us, then what

‘Laughing Christ’ was offensive

AY I express my concern with regard to your publication of a so-called “Laughing Christ” (April , 1989). To my knowledge this has no basis in scripture nor in tradition, nor in Catholic art.

Consequently, this departure is offensive. I can in no way associate your illustration with Jesus, the Son of God. Fr Remo Bonifazi CSSp, Reitz (June 18, 1989)

Americans should forgive terrorists

T

HE recent acts of terrorism in the United States are a tragedy of the worst kind.

Please, do not let the dead be avenged by Americans with hatred and anger.

This is a plea for forgiveness for whoever was evil enough to do such a devastating thing. Please set a good example.

If these people see that America can promote peace when it is hardest to do so, then all who have died can understand that they died for peace itself.

Then these people will know that what they did was wrong and has been avenged not with war but with peace and forgiveness.

Hayley Tomes (age 13), Springfield Convent Junior School, Cape Town (October 3, 2001)

Whom God calls to be priests

R

EGARDING homosexuals in the priesthood, who gives us the right to judge God on whom he calls to the vocation of the priesthood?

Even to consider banning gay priests is like saying: “Hey, God! You’re making a bad choice, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

If we have never sinned, then we may cast the first stone. God is calling us all to repent, and not to judge others; he is our only judge.

Let’s pray for each other, especially for the pastors of our Church.

They try to be good and holy men, but they are human just like us.

Enita Davis, Pretoria (November 2, 2005)

ISSUE 5000

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

7

5000 issues of Catholic news and views To mark the 5 000th issue of The Southern Cross, SydnEy dUVal looks back on the road the newspaper has travelled over the past 96 years.

Missionary Sisters of the Assumption

T

HE first issue of The Southern Cross, published from Cape Town as No 1 Vol 1 on Saturday October 16, 1920, was a combination of handwritten and typewritten reports.

Typesetters, compositors and platemakers transposed the reports into lead type which was put into forms that became plates which were fixed to a rotary press that rumbled into life at Cyano Printers in Cape Town’s Strand Street.

Today’s 5 000th issue is the combined work of computer-generated text, desktop publishing and digital printing.

In its 96 years of publishing—in which it has not missed a single edition—The Southern Cross has been an integral part of the evolution in print media leading to what the Pastoral Instruction “Aetatis Novae” in 1992 addressed as a revolution in technology and human communications that was influencing culture everywhere: “Nowhere today are people untouched by the impact of media upon religious and moral attitudes, political and social systems, and education.”

This prophetic voice from the Vatican has been affirmed by the rise of many forms of social media specially developed to reach consumers—with power even to make captives of its users. Such is the power and influence of social media that the print media itself has experienced a radical decline in fortunes.

The message now is: Adapt or die.

At The Southern Cross, the response has been a very active Yes to renewal through the online digital edition so easily accessible through internet, with other forms of information and connectivity in the pipeline.

The Southern Cross was established to be a Catholic

The Southern Cross sold on “Press Sunday” in 1928 at durban’s Emmanuel cathedral.

window on the world; to be a Catholic voice; to present the Catholic critique; to be a lighthouse of truth, justice and compassion; to tell the story of Christianity; to be an instrument of evangelisation; to report on the spiritual and liturgical life of communities; to proclaim the Good News; to be the custodian of the Word, the Word that enlightens every man and woman born into this world.

For 90 years, through the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Border Wars involving South Africa, Angola and Namibia, the harsh years of dispossession, repression and injustice under apartheid, the corruption associated with the present political leadership which stands accused of having lost its moral compass, The Southern Cross has been a voice for social justice and compassion, for transformation, for bridge-building and the human dignity of all men and women—we have one life and it is a life deserving of being lived to the full through service to others.

The Marian Congress in 1952 and the Bishops’ Campaign to save Catholic schools from the clutches of the apartheid government and Bantu Education in the late 1950s stand as magnificent testimony to the courage of the Catholic Church in this country, from both leadership, ministry and laity.

Another milestone was reached with news of the Pastoral Plan for Southern Africa, with its compelling call to be a community serving humanity.

Having skimmed through the bound volumes of the newspaper’s archives, from pages yellow and frail with age, to pages laid out with refreshing boldness, I closed the door of the archives with this thought: Here is a newspaper that has done its job and its utmost to live up to the imagery and mission of it propitious name: The Southern Cross, the constellation in the firmament that is a guide to sailors and pilgrims seeking direction—and messenger of the Word for all situations, for all needs, and for all times.

The journey of The Southern Cross has taken it across both stormy seas and calm seas, following as best it can in the footsteps of the Apostles, the first story-tellers of Christianity. n Sydney Duval is a veteran journalist and serves as a director on the board of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company, which publishes The Southern Cross.

The Missionary sisters of the assumption warmly congratulate the Editor and Staff of The southern Cross on this milestone of faithful service to the Church in South Africa. We are proud of our Catholic weekly newspaper!

Share in Christ’s Life and Mission Sr Carmel 082 543 9778 srcarmelmsa@gmail.com

Holy Family College Parktown CONGRATULATIONS to The Southern Cross on their 5 000th Edition!

We have spaces in Grades R – 10 for 2017.

Check out our website for more information and application forms .Website: www.hfc-jhb.co.za Admissions: Mrs Russell russea@hfc.org.za Phone: 011 486 1104

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SOUTHERN CROSS ON THEIR 5000TH EDITION!

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8

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

October 16, 1920: This was issue #1 Pages: 12 • Price: 3d Editor: Fr James Kelly

The look It would be many decades before newspapers would be able to print in colour, so the first ever Southern Cross is in monochrome, featuring only three editorial photos: of Pope Benedict XV; a procession in Heathfield, Cape Town; and of bishops and clergy who were present at the jubilee of Natal’s Bishop De Lalle, one of the events that led to the founding of The Southern Cross. But lots of illustrated advertisements give the issue a bright look.

The news Many articles address anti-Catholicism, such as that of Wesleyan minister Rev George Robson in Natal who called convent schools “a menace to our country”.

There are news snippets from the various Southern African vicariates, and such tantalising news as this: “Dr Hugh Smith has returned from his English holiday trip to Capetown, bringing a Catholic wife.” (Visdorp is called Capetown throughout.)

In sad news, policeman Charles Rudden of that same city has died. He was born in “Capetown” in 1839.

The columnists The great theologian Mgr Frederick Kolbe resumes an old column for children, under the moniker “Uncle Joe”.

Among his devoted readers in the 1920s will be a young boy named Denis Hurley.

Mgr Kolbe’s previous column must have been very popular. Inviting children to write in to the given address, he notes that back then, “I got without delay a letter addressed to ‘Uncle Joe, South Africa’, but it really isn’t fair to try the post office so”.

Future Southern Cross editor Fr John Colgan introduces his Question & Answer column (and writes a spirited critique of socialism). “M.D.”

God’s richest blessings & congratulations on your 5000 issue.

writes for “The Catholic mother and her home”.

Special features A whole page is devoted to “An afternoon at Heathfield with the Blessed Sacrament”. The location is described as a ”new little township growing upon the Cape Flats”, applying a racial marker instead of geographical accuracy.

The advertisers Retailers dominate the ads, and most operate from the Eastern Cape, such as Cleghorn’s of Port Elizabeth who offer mail order services, Edworks of the same city selling shoes, PE’s John Wynne selling alcoholic beverages, and Hartigan & Forsyth of East London offering a whole range of goods, including fishing tackles.

HR Morris in Cape Town sells sturdy church and school furniture, and for the smokers, Westminster promises its cigarettes to be “the most perfect obtainable in South Africa”.

The Mariannhill Printing Establish-

ment—forerunner of what is now the Mariannhill Missionary Press—advertises “Books for Native Missions”.

And plenty of convent schools advertised themselves, thereby possibly driving the good Rev George Robson totally crazy.

st. Patrick's Church, East London

We congratulate you, The Southern Cross, for your

MISSIONARY work!

You have been His witness!

Congratulations to the Southern Cross for shining your light for 5000 editions

Tel: 031 209 9426 558 Stephen Dlamini Rd, Durban

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MISSIONARIES OF AFRICA P.O. Box 10057 Edenglen 1613 South Africa

Tel.: 011.452.5283 Vocation Director: 072.987.2990 Email: mavocsa@gmail.com

Visit our international website: www.africamission-mafr.org

Catholic Community Service congratulates the Southern Cross on a magnificent achievement in keeping the Catholic community informed week after week! services offered in the Diocese of Bethlehem: • agricultural trainings and small farmer support • Psychosocial support of orphans & vulnerable children • Life skills & capacity development of CBOs • Diversion programmes & restorative justice

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

9

Southern Men who shaped The Southern Cross Cross Timeline 1917

March 17 - The idea for a national Catholic newspaper is raised by Fr Leo Sormany OMI and Fr James Kelly.

1919

The bishops of South Africa decide to launch a national Catholic weekly, to be based in Cape Town.

1920

The Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co is founded. The first Southern Cross is published on October 16, with Fr Kelly as editor.

1921

Mgr John Morris succeeds Fr Kelly as editor.

1925

September -The Southern Cross dedicates a whole issue to the installation of the first South African-born bishop, David O’Leary OMI, as vicar apostolic of the Transvaal.

1931

Mgr John Colgan becomes editor.

1932

Wordwide depression hits circulation hard.

1933

The Southern Cross opens the Catholic Bookshop in Cape Town.

1939-45

Despite paper shortages in World War II and declining advertising, The Southern Cross appears every week.

1941

Fr Owen McCann becomes editor.

1948

Fr Louis Stubbs becomes editor.

1951

The Southern Cross publishes daily editions for a week to mark the establishment of the SACBC.

1962-65

Among The Southern Cross’ correspondents at Vatican II is Archbishop Denis Hurley, writing anonymously.

1964

The Southern Cross circulation peaks at 18500.

1974

Mgr Donald de Beer succeeds Fr Stubbs as editor.

1982

The Southern Cross sells the Catholic Bookshop to the Schoenstatt Institute.

1983

Owen Williams begins his weekly column, which he writes for 24 years, a record equalled

by Fr Nicholas King SJ this year.

1986

Cardinal McCann becomes caretaker editor for five years.

1991

Fr Bernard Connor is appointed editor.

1993

The Southern Cross becomes one of South Africa’s first newspapers to be produced by desktop publishing.

1995

Michael Shackleton becomes editor. The Southern Cross celebrates 75 years of unbroken weekly publication.

2000

The Southern Cross headlines its first pilgrimage, led by Fr King to the Holy Land.

2001

Günther Simmermacher becomes The Southern Cross’ first lay editor.

2002

The Southern Cross launches its Associates Campaign.

2010

The Southern Cross launches its digital edition.

2014

The Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co elects its first female chair of the board, Rosanne Shields.

2016

The Southern Cross publishes its 5000th issue.

Fr James Kelly (1920-22)

Fr Louis Stubbs (1948-74)

Mgr John Morris (1923-31)

Mgr John Colgan (1922,1931-41)

Fr Owen McCann (1941-48)

Mgr Donald de Beer Cardinal Owen McCann Fr Bernard Connor (1991-95) (1986-91) (1974-86)

Michael Shackleton (1995-2001)

These are the participants at the 1919 meeting of bishops and others in durban that committed the local Church to launch a national Catholic weekly. in the front are (from left): Mgr Frederick Kolbe, Mgr Kelly of East london, Bishop MacSherry, Bishop delalle, Bishop Cenez of Basutoland, Mgr lanslots OSB of northern Transvaal, Fr James Kelly (who would become the first editor). in the back row are Oblate Fathers O’donnell OMi (second from left) and Sormany (fourth from left). Fr O’donnell promoted The Southern Cross while Fr Sormany first raised the idea of a Catholic weekly.

10

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

Dec 6, 1939: This was issue #1000 Pages: 44 • Price: 3d Editor: Mgr John Colgan

The look Issue 1 000 is also the Christmas issue for 1939. It includes a 20-page Christmas supplement and a fourpage advertising wrap-around.

In the style of the ’30s, there are multiple headings to stories. There were only six editorial photos.

The news The League of Militant Atheists has issued a manifesto in Moscow to eliminate Christianity in eastern and south-eastern Europe, and the Vatican has condemned the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland.

In Poland, the occupying Germans are preventing Cardinal Hlond from returning home. Several bishops and priests have already been killed there by the Nazis.

The International Eucharistic Congress planned for Nice, France, in 1940 has been cancelled because of the war.

Fr Frederick Osterrath has been appointed abbot of the Benedictines in Pietersburg.

The columnists In her long-running “Home Circle” column, and in a separate feature, Mary Singleton gives many recipes for Christmas lunch—especially for puddings.

Fr Bernard Huss, a progressive Mariannhill Missionary, writes about “Native Affairs”, while Fr Gavan Duffy offers “Theology for the Layman”. Fr J Kendal SJ reflects on the pope’s prayer intentions for December.

The “Children’s Corner” is written by “Granny Dimple” (real name Cecilia Coker). It is her penultimate col-

The front of a wrap-around advertising the 1940 model Packard, and one of several pages of Mary Singleton’s Christmas recipes. umn: she dies on December 8 after suffering a stroke while at Mass in Wittebome, Cape Town.

Special features Apart from the 20-page Christmas supplement (with more seasonal material in the main body), there is a feature article on Pope Benedict XV’s experience “in the last war”, and part two of a three-article series on Spain after the civil war. And if all that is too depressing, there is the “Cheerio” page of jokes, most of which are very much of their time.

The advertisers Cleghorn’s from Port Elizabeth,

present in the first issue, are still advertising in 1939.

Many other big brands have come on board since, such as Singer sewing machines, Sunlight soap, Haig Scotch, Snowflake flour, and Standard Bank—the latter of whom these days sees no need to reciprocate the huge Catholic custom it receives with ads in the Catholic newspaper.

The four-page wrap-around advertises the 1940 Packard, Holmes Motors in Cape Town’s Strand Street, Builders’ Merchants, Springbok cigarettes and Castle Pilsener. n Download the full issue as a PDF at www.scross.co.za/2016/09/christmas1939-southern-cross-1000th-issue

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The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

11

12

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

An interview with the editor: Günther Simmermacher has been with this newspaper since 1995 and became its editor in 2001. FR RUSSEll POlliTT SJ interviewed him about The Southern Cross— past, present and future.

You have been with The Southern Cross for almost 22 years, 15 of these as editor. The world of media has revolutionised in those 22 years. The Southern Cross seems to have, so far, “weathered the storm”. What do you attribute this to?

Indeed, the newspaper industry has changed immensely in those two decades; consumer behaviour has changed—in large part because of the stupid decision by most newspapers to give away all their content for free [on the Internet]— and that has resulted in declining circulations worldwide. Many long-established newspapers have folded.

We aren’t immune to that, but we have a very loyal core readership that really loves its Catholic weekly. And I hope that the quality of The Southern Cross has fostered that loyalty.

Some publications have panicked and tried to totally reinvent themselves. That sort of thing almost never works. We have confidence in our content, and we try to improve it all the time. But we won’t do anything silly to try and be “with it”.

Has your readership changed in that time?

Well, our readership is much more diverse than it was in January 1995, when I first came to The Southern Cross. I don’t think the old cliché of the readership being “old white people” is true anymore, if it ever was.

We can see that on our Community Pics page, and in our news pages, and I can see that concretely in the demographics of the people who take part in our pilgrimages.

Also age-wise, on Facebook I notice that we have a significant number of younger readers.

Though younger readers in our case means more 30-upwards than teenagers!

That’s interesting. Younger readers are interacting with The Southern Cross on Facebook. At most meetings in dioceses and parishes people always raise concern about “the youth”—or the lack of participation of young people. Any ideas, from your experience and knowledge of media, as to how the Church can better reach out to the 30-down-

wards group?

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I think, first of all, we mustn’t get stuck on the idea that all youth should be active. Just like most adults, they won’t be. But we must engage the young people who are active. That means giving them a role in the “management” of parish life.

As far as media goes, we must give youth the freedom to express themselves without fear of being pulled up on points of doctrine.

What young person, or anybody, wants to hear: “You are wrong”?

So what is needed is a space, on social media and in catechism, for young people to be engaged in respectful dialogue, where ideas can be exchanged without any arguments having to be won.

Do you think that The Southern Cross has exploited new media well enough?

Within our limited resources we’re trying. We were one of the first newspapers in South Africa to offer digital subscriptions, and have more digital subscribers than some well-known secular newspapers.

But in the digital world, much of what media organisations are doing is guesswork. The Internet has created huge problems for the publishing industry, and nobody really knows what the right answers for a sustainable future are; where the revenue streams will come from when circulations drop below sustainable levels.

But there are also opportunities.

At The Southern Cross we are looking at broadening “the brand”, so our title will mean more to people than it being just a newspaper. We are busy strategising the whats and hows of that, but we are determined to keep The Southern Cross going.

We are fortunate to have an excellent digital editor in Claire Allen, an authority in the field on the board of directors in the form of Jude Mathurine, and in Claire Mathieson a really switched-on person on the Editorial Advisory Board. So I’m confident that we’ll walk on the right digital paths— but, of course, constrained within the limitations of resources available to us.

You speak of limited resources.

How many people work full-time to produce this Catholic weekly?

We have a tiny full-time staff: Four in editorial—plus Michael Shackleton, who comes in twice a week to proof the issues before they go to print—and five in administration.

Because of retirements, we have been able to reduce our staff complement by one.

What changes in Catholic life have you seen in South Africa over the last two decades?

The Parishioners of St Mary’s Catholic Church in Pietermaritzburg

CONGRATULATE THE SOUTHERN CROSS ON THEIR 5000th ISSUE!

Thank You for being weekly so faithfully the visible face in words and pictures of an invisible God in our country.

günther Simmermacher sits on a pile of every edition of The Southern Cross he has worked on since joining the newspaper in January 1995.

(Photo: Mandla Zibi) I see three major areas. Firstly, the Church has become more integrated. There’s still a long way to go, of course, but we’re on the way.

The African diaspora in South Africa is also having an impact on the local Church. Some formerly “white parishes” are now mostly black, with Masses offered for different language groups. We are the universal Church—now we have to act like one.

Secondly, the racial composition of the bishops has changed quite dramatically. Twenty years ago there were [makes a quick count] seven active black African bishops in the SACBC region, four of them in South Africa itself. Now there are 13, and I have no doubt that the number will increase. That has an influence on the way the Church thinks and acts throughout the region.

Finally, funding agencies are giving less to the Southern African Church now than they used to, so we are moving from being a dependent Church to one that has to be self-sufficient. We haven’t arrived at that stage yet—we still need funding from overseas, and becoming a self-sufficient Church will need much more work still—but that is a very significant change.

With these changes in mind, how has the mission of The Southern Cross changed over the years?

When I first came to the newspaper, there was an attitude that black Catholics generally have no interest in an English-language Catholic newspaper, and the content sort of reflected that. Over the years we have tried to become more universal, trying to reflect the local Church more accurately.

Having said that, the core issues for us Catholics are universal: our faith in the Lord, our devotion to Our Lady and the saints, our fidelity to the Holy Father, our need to pray, our call to mission and all that transcends race and culture and class.

Of course, there are differences in the details of how we live the faith and celebrate the liturgy, but there is so much that we have in common.

The Southern Cross’ mission is to speak to these core elements of our faith, and to offer a reflection of how that faith is lived in all the communities.

I admit that sometimes we might not succeed entirely in doing so—that’s for our readers to decide—but that philosophy is our guiding principle.

What is the target audience of The Southern Cross? Do you know the demographics?

We don’t have the resources for market research, so we don’t have demographic statistics. And we certainly don’t have a specifically defined target demographic.

We believe it is necessary that every Catholic family with the facility to read English ought to have a Southern Cross in their homes. So our target audience is all those Catholics.

“Catholic” by its nature is universal and therefore also means, it seems to me, that there will be differing views and opinions on matters Catholic. The Church has always held diversity in its unity. How do you navigate opposing views, conflicting views?

You know, The Southern Cross is the only national Catholic weekly, and that is an advantage in many ways, because we are a meeting point for Catholics who’d otherwise avoid other Catholics who hold conflicting viewpoints.

In countries like Britain or the US you have different Catholic publications for people holding progressive, moderate, conservative or ultra-conservative views.

That breeds a factional Church and ghettos of ideology.

Now, we do have factions here in South Africa too, obviously. But at least these factions have a forum where they can “meet”. So The Southern Cross fulfils the function of being a home to people of diverging viewpoints.

And the fact that these conflicting viewpoints—from very conservative to very progressive—are expressed in the newspaper shows that we are providing a forum for all Catholics.

On the letters page. That must be quite difficult to manage—at times letters seem to be vitriolic Continued overleaf

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ISSUE 5000

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

13

We are a forum for all Catholics

The Southern Cross’ staff in October 1995: (from left) avril Hanslo, Elizabeth Hutton (then Cozett), Joan Fish, günther Simmermacher, the late Eugene donnelly, Michael Shackleton (then editor), business manager Pamela davids, alex Economou, linda dombas, and the late Carol Brown. Only Ms davids and Mr Simmermacher are still on the staff of The Southern Cross. Mr Shackleton retired as editor in 2001 but comes into the office twice a week as advisory editor, and deputises for the editor when needed. Mrs Hanslo, Hutton and Fish all retired in 2015/16. Mrs Brown died suddenly in 2001. Mr Economou left the newspaper in 1999, Mr donnelly after 41 years in 2010, passing away in 2013. (Photo: Sydney duval) and aggressive. Sometimes I am disappointed at the level of conversation, or the absence thereof, Catholics choose to have on that page. How do you decide on which letters to publish or not?

Linked to that, it seems that the same old people write letters.

But letters pages are always like that. Even under Cardinal [Owen] McCann’s editorship in the late 1980s, the same people were writing in, from sharply contrasting perspectives and there was lots of aggro. It hasn’t really changed.

We try to publish most letters we receive. I don’t think it’s my job to decide whose views may be heard and whose not.

Those that get rejected might have to do with parish or diocesan conflicts which we can’t really get involved in, or they repeat points already made by others, or are too difficult to understand, or are too long. Or if they are too nasty—and if you think what we publish is sometimes too vitriolic, you should see some of the stuff we don’t run!

My disappointment is that the letters page is not an accurate demographic representation of our readership, the way the pictures page tends to be. I really wish that would change.

Do you edit letters much?

Only for clarity and language. But we might cut out inappropriate, irrelevant or repetitive points. And then the letters page editor, Mary Leveson, might have to shorten longer letters to fit them into the page. But it’s very important that we try our best to retain the integrity of letters.

Sometimes letter writers get annoyed at us for editing them, and

as a writer myself I can understand that. But when we edit letters, we really try to serve both the writer and the readers.

At times some clergy and hierarchy have taken issue with The Southern Cross because they feel that it does not express what they want to see. What have you learnt about handling these situations when they arise in the last 22 years?

A couple of years ago a now-retired bishop wrote to me, saying something like: “There was a time when some people thought that you were not a good choice as editor but few would still say the same today.” Which was very good to hear.

I think that I might have come as something of a shock to the bishops in my early days as editor, because The Southern Cross very clearly took positions which in the climate of the Church at the time were controversial, and even taboo. I know that especially by speaking out forcefully about the clergy abuse scandal, I didn’t make friends in some quarters.

But since Pope Francis is saying many of the same things now, The Southern Cross isn’t really that “controversial” anymore.

I see The Southern Cross as being very much of the middle-ground.

And if one looks back, it always was on most issues, certainly under my editorship and that of my predecessor, Michael Shackleton.

These days I have a good relationship with most bishops. Some are very supportive of The Southern Cross, some are indifferent. I’m more disappointed in the indifferent bishops than the two or three

that are critical. At least the critical bishops care about the newspaper.

And, of course, when a bishop or priest speaks out against The Southern Cross, that’s actually good marketing for us [laughs].

How do you as editor—especially in the papacy of Pope Francis who generates headlines weekly—decide on lead stories every week?

There’s no science to it. On the front-page, as a rule we try to have South African stories. And we look at stories that will inform, edify and/or entertain our readers, or make points that can inform our Catholic conscience.

We don’t seek controversy, and I don’t think [for us] it’s a selling point. As a journalist, I love working in an environment where we don’t need to do controversy or stitch up people.

Have you ever regretted any stories you published?

Oh, of course there are a few that could have been handled better.

Stories with errors are annoying for any editor. Though we have remarkably few of those, in comparison to some other publications.

There is one story which I think was unfair to the priest involved, but that had more to do with the lack of cooperation from his diocese. We gave him the right to respond, and we resolved the issue amicably with the priest.

And that’s important: if we mess

COMHGHAIRDEAS

The Committee of the Irish South African Association in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban congratulates The Southern Cross on the publication of their 5000th issue www.ireland.co.za members.jhb@ireland.co.za members.dbn@ireland.co.za members@ireland.co.za

Southern Cross editorial staff in September 2016 with the papal nuncio archbishop Peter Wells (second from left): Mandla Zibi, günther Simmermacher, Michael Shackleton and Claire allen. Missing is Mary leveson. up, we must try to fix it.

What have you found most difficult to manage as editor?

Well, writing editorials on a weekly basis is a tough gig. We’ve just put together an Editorial Advisory Board, and I hope that some of the members will pitch in with the occasional editorial. I think that would be really good for the newspaper as well.

What has been the highlight of your time at The Southern Cross?

The most incredible story was when an appeal we ran for a kidney donor for a teenage lad resulted in a kidney transplant, with the donor a future priest. That was a powerful experience.

It’s amazing how a newspaper can change lives. I also treasure the story of the prison inmate who decided to convert to Catholicism on strength of having read The Southern Cross. That is humbling.

There are lots of instances where The Southern Cross has had a positive impact on people’s lives. Those are the real highlights.

And for you, as a journalist?

Oh, from a professional point of view, having been interviewed or quoted by international broadcasters and publications worldwide like the BBC, Voice of America, Time magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, La Stampa and so on; that’s quite nice.

Actually, on a professional note, another highlight came fairly early

in my editorship.

There was a regular letter writer of a very conservative bent by the name of V G Davies, who is dead now. Mr Davies was not happy when I became editor. My late colleague Gene Donnelly told me that when he informed Mr Davies of my appointment [to succeed Michael Shackleton in February 2001], “VG turned on his heels and walked away, in disgust”.

Some time later Mr Davies phoned me about some amendment or other to a letter he had submitted. And then he said: “You know, Mr Simmermacher, I really enjoy reading The Southern Cross these days.”

Around the same time Archbishop Hurley was also very complimentary about my work, which meant a lot to me. But the compliment from Mr Davies, somebody who shared little common ground with me, probably trumped that.

What is the biggest challenge you, as editor, face today?

Keeping people like both Hurley and V G Davies happy? I really mean that.

The challenge, as editor, is to produce a quality newspaper that can bring together people of different perspectives, backgrounds and education, and that all of them find something that speaks to them in The Southern Cross.

That’s what I hope to accomplish.

14

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

Feb 4, 1959: This was issue #2000 Pages: 12 • Price: 6d Editor: Fr Louis Stubbs

The look The page format is larger than the present tabloid shape. Much in keeping with the newspaper design of the 1950s, The Southern Cross looks sprightly, with lots of photos and short stories. There is no organisation, however. On page 2, there are local and international news alongside obituaries.

The news Cardinal Giovanni Montini of Milan predicts that the new ecumenical council called by Pope John XXIII will be “the greatest which the Church has ever celebrated in its 2000 years of history” (as Pope Paul VI, he would preside over the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965).

Non-Catholics have helped to build the new church of St Christopher at Waterval-Boven in Lydenburg diocese.

Catholic Action movements are preparing a lecture for the National Clergy Conference on Catholic Action in Johannesburg, and the Society of St Vincent de Paul in Port Elizabeth is preparing to celebrate the society’s centenary in June.

The anonymous “Layman’s Log” (presumably written by managing editor Andrew Murray) asks why South African nuns are so camera shy—in the same issue that features two photos of local nuns.

Writing from London, Douglas Hyde offers his weekly fulmination against communism.

The columnists

Special features

The weekly “Catholics Among the Stars” shines the spotlight on 48year-old Northern Irish actor Joseph Tomelty, whose most recent film was A Night To Remember.

Mgr Desmond Hatton writes on missions, Fr Eric Edmonstone SJ reflects on the pope’s prayer intentions, and “Aunt Valerie” writes “The Children’s Corner”.

Fr Michael McNulty promotes Holy Childhood Sunday on February 15.

The advertisers Adverts include some well-known names, such as Ellis Brown, John Orr’s and Ansteys. But there were also very local ads, such as those for the Hotel Imperial in Umtata, which still exists today.

St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College 106 Waverley Road, Bayswater, Bloemfontein, 9301 Phone (051) 436 6550, Fax (051) 436 6827 E-mail stjoe@mweb.co.za

Supported by more than 200 years of tradition

Congratulates The Southern Cross on its 5000th issue of publishing We are a dedicated Catholic school, at which anyone who subscribes to our ethos is most welcome, regardless of religion or heritage.

We celebrated our 75th year of existence in 2015.

For 30 years we have enjoyed 100% pass rates.

We are constantly expanding both in numbers and structures.

Enrolment for 2017 and beyond is open, with limited vacancies in certain Grades.

ISSUE 5000

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

15

The Southern Cross on pilgrimage The Southern Cross has headlined 17 pilgrimages since the first in 2000. günTHER SiMMERMaCHER looks back on some of the highlights.

P

ILGRIMAGES have been an integral part of Catholic spirituality since the earliest days of the Church. Graffiti in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem proves that pilgrims came there even before Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire in the early fourth century.

They are expressions of a healthy piety, but more than that, they are occasions for spiritual growth and focused prayer.

Since May 2000, The Southern Cross has headlined 17 pilgrimages, several in association with Radio Veritas. Each of them has brought many graces.

There is something special about going on a pilgrimage with people from all over South Africa, and beyond. It is an expression of the wider Southern African Church—something we, as the local Church, must do better yet in building.

On two occasions, however, I felt that the Holy Spirit intervened in events in such a way as to give our pilgrimages a particular lead.

One such occasion was the most recent pilgrimage, to the canonisation of Mother Teresa. The 40plus strong group, led by Fr Brian Mhlanga OP and including three other priests, truly was a broad spread of South Africa’s Church.

The group was on its way to the beautiful Rieti Valley to visit two places associated with St Francis of Assisi: Greccio, where the saint staged the first Nativity Scene, and Fonte Colombo, where he wrote his order’s Rule.

While the pilgrims were enjoying the lush countryside of central Italy, in Cape Town I received the message of the death that morning of Fr Bonaventure Hinwood, one of South Africa’s best-known and much-loved Franciscans.

Fr Hinwood was, of course, a long-time Southern Cross columnist and back in the day a regular on TV and radio. He had also taught at St John Vianney Seminary for more than 30 years.

Thanks to the wonders of WhatsApp, I managed to get hold of the pilgrimage leaders to inform them of Fr Hinwood’s passing. And so it turned out that a group of Southern Cross and Radio Veritas pilgrims, which included St John Vianney vice-rector Fr John Selemela, was able to offer Mass for the late Franciscan friar at the Franciscan sanctuary of Greccio, a place where St Francis himself lived (his cell can still be viewed there, as can that of St Bonaventure).

The group also remembered Fr Bonaventure at the subsequent Masses in Assisi. It is a beautiful story. Some people might invoke coincidence, but I believe God had a plan.

G

od also had a plan last year, when I missed out on the beatification of Bl Benedict Daswa.

A year previously, Bishop João Rodrigues of Tzaneen and I had led a group of pilgrims on a veritable tour de force of holy places where we prayed for the success of Daswa’s cause—in Fatima, Santarém (site of a Eucharistic miracle), Avila, Alba de Tormes (with the tomb of St Teresa of Avila), Saragossa, Lourdes, Tours, Lisieux, the Miraculous Medal chapel in Paris and other places.

Soon after, Pope Francis announced the date for the beatification: on a Sunday when I was supposed to go with my old friend Fr Emil Blaser on a pilgrimage to the Saints of Italy. I was very disappointed to be missing the beatification.

As I prepared for the pilgrimage, I read up about St Benedict and St Scholastica, the founders of western monasticism, whose birthplace of Norcia we were to visit three days before the beatification ceremony was to take place in Limpopo. Daswa’s chosen baptismal name was Benedict, and the saint’s motto “Ora et Labora” was also his.

It turned out that St Benedict’s portfolio of patronages include witchcraft, and that St Scholastica is the patron saint for rain—which would include lightning storms such as those in January 1990 that led to the witchhunt in which Benedict Daswa refused to take part.

Coincidence? I have no doubt that God planned it that a group of South African pilgrims should go to pray at the place of these two saints whose patronages include the two main elements that led to the martyrdom of Benedict Daswa.

above: Fr nicholas King SJ celebrates Mass in the oasis of Ein gedi in the Judean desert in 2000.

Below: archbishop William Slattery’s first Southern Cross pilgrimage on the Sea of galilee in May 2013. He will lead another pilgrimage to the Holy land, Rome and assisi in September 2017.

I have not been on all these 17 Southern Cross pilgrimages, but every one of those that I was blessed to join holds special memories.

And yet, the first of them, to the Holy Land and Egypt in May of the Holy Year 2000, began badly.

As we arrived in the Galilee, spiritual director Fr Nicholas King’s knee swelled up, a pilgrim fell and sustained a black eye, and another’s luggage was delivered to the wrong room (we found it the next morning).

Matters soon improved, and we had a wonderful journey, with one of the most memorable Masses of my life. After visiting the Dead Sea, we found a spot under the datepalms at the Ein Gedi oasis. From plastic crates we built an impromptu altar, covered it with a white cloth, and Fr King, armed with a Mass kit, celebrated Mass.

There have been many very special places for Mass since: Next to the spot of Jesus’ crucifixion in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and also within a few metres of Christ’s tomb; at the Rock of the Agony in Gethsemane; at the tombs of St Peter, St John XXIII and St John Paul II respectively in St Peter’s basilica (and so many other great Roman churches); at the tombs of St Francis in Assisi, St Rita in Cascia and St Teresa of Avila in Alba de Tormes; in the Porziuncola in Assisi; in the magnificent Santa Croce in Florence; in the mighty cathedrals of Tours, Venice and Milan; in the lovely Wieskirche in Bavaria; on Mount Nebo in Jordan; the cave church of St Mark on Cairo’s Mokattam Mountain; and so many more. I thank God for all of these.

Some of the Southern Cross pilgrimages have witnessed special occasions: the canonisations of Ss John XXIII and John Paul II in 2014 and this month of Mother Teresa; the Oberammergau Passion Play in 2010 (preceded a few days earlier by praying at the sites of the Passion narrative in Jerusalem); last year’s exhibition of the Shroud of Turin. And in May 2017 The Southern Cross will go to Fatima to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions there.

I am grateful to the many spiritual directors who have taken Southern Cross pilgrims under their spiritual direction: Fr Emil Blaser OP (five times); Archbishops William Slattery and Stephen Brislin (both twice); Fr Nicholas King SJ (twice); Bishops Zithulele Mvemve, João Rodrigues and Joe Sandri; Mgr Clifford Stokes and Frs Michael Hagan, Brian Mhlanga OP and Larry Kaufmann CCsR, who will lead our 18th pilgrimage next month.

And, of course, I thank all those who joined pilgrimages hosted by The Southern Cross. n See page 20 for photos from this month’s Canonisation Pilgrimage.

URsULinEs of the Blessed virgin Mary

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• WĂƌƚ ŽĨ Ă ŐůŽďĂů DĂƌŝƐƚ ĞĚƵĐĂƟ ŽŶ ƐLJƐƚĞŵ • Value-based ethos • /ŶŶŽǀĂƟ ǀĞ ĐƵƌƌŝĐƵůƵŵ • WƌŽǀĞŶ ƌĞĐŽƌĚ ŽĨ ϱϬ LJĞĂƌƐ ŽĨ ĂĐĂĚĞŵŝĐ ĞdžĐĞůůĞŶĐĞ • dĞĐŚŶŽůŽŐLJͲĞŶƌŝĐŚĞĚ ůĞĂƌŶŝŶŐ • tĞůůͲƋƵĂůŝĮ ĞĚ͕ ĚĞĚŝĐĂƚĞĚ ĞĚƵĐĂƚŽƌƐ • /ŶĐůƵƐŝǀĞ ĂĐĂĚĞŵŝĐ͕ ĐƵůƚƵƌĂů ĂŶĚ ĐŽͲĐƵƌƌŝĐƵůĂƌ ƉƌŽŐƌĂŵŵĞ • Solid work ethic • &ĂŵŝůLJͲŽƌŝĞŶƚĂƚĞĚ ĂŌ ĞƌĐĂƌĞ • ĂƌŝŶŐ͕ ŚĂƉƉLJ ĂŶĚ ƐĂĨĞ ĞŶǀŝƌŽŶŵĞŶƚ • dŚĞƌĂƉLJ ƐƉĞĐŝĂůŝƐƚƐ • EƵƌƚƵƌŝŶŐ ŝŶĚĞƉĞŶĚĞŶƚ ƚŚŝŶŬĞƌƐ ĨŽƌ ůŝĨĞůŽŶŐ ůĞĂƌŶŝŶŐ

ϱϬ LJĞĂƌƐ ŽĨ DĂƌŝƐƚ ĚƵĐĂƟ ŽŶ ŝŶ >ŝŶŵĞLJĞƌ left: Saints of italy at the birthplace of Ss Benedict and Scholastica in norcia in September 2015.

Right: Fr Emil Blaser OP preaches in the basilica of St Sebastian in Rome in 2006.

ĂƚŚŽůŝĐ DĂƌŝƐƚ ŽͲĞĚƵĐĂƟ ŽŶĂů ĂLJ ^ĐŚŽŽů ĨƌŽŵ 'ƌĂĚĞ ϬϬ ƚŽ 'ƌĂĚĞ ϭϮ ĂƐƚ ^ƚƌĞĞƚ >ŝŶŵĞLJĞƌ dĞůĞƉŚŽŶĞ͗ нϮϳ ϭϭ ϰϯϱ Ϭϲϰϲ ǁǁǁ͘ŵĂƌŝƐƚďů͘ĐŽ͘njĂ

16

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

March 26, 1978: This was issue #3000 Pages: 12 • Price: R0,20 Editor: Mgr Donald de Beer

The look The look in 1978 is better than the jumble of the mid-1970s, and the paper quality much improved. There are photos on all pages, though these are mostly international. The masthead is in red, but that’s the only colour in that edition.

The news Pope Paul VI was the lead story in issue #2000, and a thousand editions later, he is still the lead. In 1959 he was looking forward to Vatican II; here he celebrates Vatican I as he calls the dogma of papal infallibility “a foundation of Church life”.

We also learn that St Francis’ bones have been disinterred, cleaned and resealed in Assisi. Other than his skull, the bones are said to be in good condition.

In local news, SACBC general-secretary Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa has been released from detention by the apartheid security forces at Modderbee prison, but he remains a banned person.

And Mgr Michael McNulty, referred to in issue 2000, has died in Ireland at the age of 77.

The columnists In 1978 The Southern Cross has many regular columns. Fr Bonaventure Hinwood OFM writes the very popular “Your Questions Answered” column, while “The Scrivener” offers a response to “the anti-life brigade”.

Tracy Heilbuth writes a “What the Now Generation Thinks” column, and “AAR” reflects on the Sunday Gospel readings.

Luky Whittle’s “Coffee Break” tells

the moving story of the son of a bankrupt farmer, and Ethné Stevens is in charge of the “Children’s Club”.

The Brother Juniper cartoons, already running in the 1950s, are still a weekly feature.

Special features Eileen Nelson writes about the orphanages run by the Holy Cross Sisters in Cape Town (Sr Jane Frances is seen “with her young charges” in the main photo above), and there is a long article on finding St Peter’s bones.

The advertisers A full-page ad for the Pontifical Mission Society, signed by its longtime director, Mgr Desmond Hatton, is sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy.

Advertisers from this issue who are still with us in 2016 are the Brothers of Charity, St Anthony’s Home and CBC Pretoria.

And if in 1978 you decide to go on a 23-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Rome, Naples, Pompeii, Lourdes and London, prepare to splash out R1 260.

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CONGRATULATIONS!

The Southern Cross – 5000th issue of publishing since 16 October 1920.

In celebration of the Catholic newspaper, we at Dominican Convent School would like to take this opportunity of Congratulating The Southern Cross of reaching this remarkable tier in the publishing industry. Best wishes to another 5000 issues.

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

17

A note from the chair: We are looking ahead Issue #5000 is a good time to recall the proud history of The Southern Cross, but it is also a time to look to the future, writes ROSannE SHiEldS, chair of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co, which publishes the newspaper.

T

HE Holy Spirit chose St Patrick’s Day for the birth of the concept of a newspaper for the Catholic Church of Southern Africa.

It took just over three years to get from the idea to the point of printing the first edition in October 1920—and now here we are, celebrating issue number 5 000.

I wonder whether anybody on that March day in 1917 really thought we would be here today, 99 years later, still sharing the news.

There are so many people who have worked together to achieve this: editors, journalists, reporters, business and administrative staff, volunteers, clergy and religious, advertisers, contributors, supporters, directors and you, the readers.

Growing up in a Catholic home, The Southern Cross was always on our kitchen table, a part of the general landscape. But as a teenager and student I paid it little attention.

Then when Michael Shackleton came along in mid-1995, it suddenly started speaking to me—and it has done so ever since. Now I lose sleep over it, love it like a

member of the family and feel it is part of my DNA. As a small child I remember my grandfather, Jean Pothier, being on the board and speaking “Southern Cross”. Later I shared many a stiff drink with my father, Bernard, also serving time on the board, as he worried about falling circulation. I look at my fellow directors and I know this paper has us by the heart.

Now we must look to the future. Nothing in this world stands still, the pace of the 21st century is frenetic and young people are even more easily distracted.

While our circulation has fallen at a slower rate than that of mainstream publications, this is cold comfort. Fortunately the decision was taken some time ago to embrace the digital age, and our online presence has steadily grown.

With our sights firmly set on our 100th jubilee in 2020 we are increasing this presence via our website and social media.

O

nce our key mission was “A Catholic newspaper in every Catholic home”; now we must aim for “Catholic media in every Catholic home…and in any home where we are wanted”.

We need to count our success not by whether the paper is on the kitchen table, but by whether our children read it on their smart phones, “like” our Facebook page and share snippets with their friends. Young people are the future of our Church and we must meet them in their way, with a message that resonates for them.

While we have much to celebrate and be thankful for with this 5 000th edition, there is one major

Rosanne Shields, first female chair of the board of the Catholic newspaper & Publishing Company, which publishes The Southern Cross, with (left) her predecessor, Chris Moerdyk, and archbishop Stephen Brislin, who is an ex officio member of the board. issue that saddens and frustrates us. This is the lack of adequate support from many of our bishops and priests, and in some cases from parish pastoral councils.

The Southern Cross is largely reliant on marketing at parish level.

This is our key point of sale and where our readership is located.

Yet, generally speaking and gratefully noting glowing exceptions, so little effort is put into encouraging people to buy the paper or subscribe online. Why? Is there another national Catholic paper we don’t know about? For better or for worse, this is it.

What’s more, we have been “it” for 5 000 editions, published weekly, uninterrupted, surviving a world war, various political crises, economic recessions and now the inefficiency of the South African

Post Office. In all of this time we have not cost the Church hierarchy a cent.

No other mainstream church in Southern Africa has anything like The Southern Cross. Our paper deserves better.

H

ere at The Southern Cross we will continue to serve our readers and the Church as best we can by reporting on the work of the Church in the modern world, analysing the challenges that Catholics and those of other faiths or no faith must face, providing insights and diverse views, always reflecting the Gospels, Church doctrine and Catholic Social Teachings.

We will carry different viewpoints because this stimulates dialogue and thereby deepens our

understanding of our faith.

The editor is not alone in this.

He has the support of the directors and draws on the wealth of experience of those on the newly-established Editorial Advisory Board, coming from the fields of communication, social development, theology and academia.

Special thanks must go to all of our associates who have helped us to get to this point. It would not have been financially possible without you.

Sincere thanks also to editor Günther Simmermacher and our current staff for their hard work in putting this special edition together.

The Southern Cross has a unique opportunity now to embrace new forms of communication and we invite you to join us on this journey, one described so powerfully by Pope Francis for the 48th World Communications Day: “We are called to show that the Church is the home of all. Are we capable of communicating the image of such a Church? Communication is a means of expressing the missionary vocation of the entire Church…”

Let’s grow and promote our paper because none of us knows when the Holy Spirit is speaking to the young man or woman with a vocation, the social activist who needs encouragement, the longserving priest or sister who deserves recognition or the letter writer who seeks an expression of their faith.

Don’t let it lie dormant at the back of the church. n Rosanne Shields is the first female chair of the board of directors of the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company.

Congratulations to The Southern Cross for reaching 5000 uninterrupted editions.

May you continue to have many more years of success

CATHOLIC LITURGICAL ARTS Tel: 011 782 3135 Fax: 086 263 7303 E-mail: catholicliturgicalarts@gmail.com

18

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ISSUE 5000

June 8, 1997: This was issue #4000 Pages: 16 • Price: R1,80 Editor: Michael Shackleton

The look The Southern Cross had experimented with design for a number of years, after being one of the first South African newspapers to be typeset using exclusively the new Desktop Publishing technology.

In the months leading up to issue #4000, the newspaper increased the use of colour—at the time still expensive—but the drawback of that was the poor printing quality served by Independent Newspapers. In this special edition, seven pages are in colour.

The news The bishops of Zimbabwe have condemned the misuse of aid money for President Robert Mugabe’s wife, while Italian doctors indicate that Pope John Paul II is showing signs of having Parkinson’s disease (something the Vatican would refuse to confirm until after the pope’s death in 2005).

Fr Buti Tlhagale OMI, secretarygeneral of the SACBC (and now archbishop of Johannesburg), urges the South African government to help Mozambique clear up landmines planted there by the apartheid regime.

The columnists Fr Nicholas King SJ is already writing his weekly reflections on the Mass readings, as he has done for the previous five years (This means that this year he has written his column for 24 years).

Owen Williams wrote his popular column for the same number of

above: Owen Williams’ column. left: Fr (now archbishop) Buti Tlhagale years, from 1983 till his death in August 2007. In issue #4000, Owen looks back on writing for The Southern Cross over 14 years.

Other columnists in that issue are “The Pilgrim”, a conversational column; Mary Finley, whose column aims at women; and Deacon Nick Bruce, who answers questions on matters of faith.

A weekly page of sundry materials includes a review of an issue from the archives (here from December 6, 1939), an anagram brainteaser, a saints’ diary, and a long-running series of “The Popes Through the Ages”, with Pope Damasus I (366-384) featuring in that edition—he was also the “Saint of the Week” in the 1939 issue.

Special features We celebrate the 4000th issue by introducing readers to the staff and columnists of The Southern Cross, and focus on long-time readers, with Ted James of Pretoria going back to at least 1923 and Dr Nan

Page 10 on June 8, 1997 Mulhern to 1925.

We also feature Oblate Father John Brady who at the age of 92 was still keeping the Catholic archives at Victory Park, Johannesburg, going. We learn that South Africa’s first Catholic publication was The Colonist, published weekly from 1850-59.

The advertisers There are many congratulatory ads, but from the regular advertisers in that issue, some still appear frequently in The Southern Cross today, such as Viva Safaris, the Franciscans, the Priests of the Sacred Heart, Mariannhill Monastery Retreat House, Assumption Sisters, Kolping Society, Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union and the TEE College.

PERSPECTIVES

It’s time now for angels D EPENDING on when you read this, we will celebrate or have celebrated the September 29 feast day of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

And on October 2 the liturgical calendar notes the feast of the Guardian Angels, but as that is a Sunday this year we miss out.

Angels seem to be quite popular, though more esoteric circles than Catholic circles these days, like the end times, and what is sometimes known as the Rapture.

There is much in apocalyptic literature about angels. In fact, St Michael is featured there as the powerful defender who finally defeats Satan, showing God’s ultimate greater power.

It is good to have some idea of these scriptural images, and scripture scholar Margaret Mollett in the latest Family Matters magazine writes on the Rapture and premillennialism theories—something about which Catholics are mostly quite illinformed.

Gabriel as the messenger and Raphael as the healer are popular, but devotion to St Michael in the Catholic world tends to eclipse the other two archangels. Many parishes, for example, say the Prayer to St Michael at the end of Mass to “defend us in the day of battle and be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil”. Maybe some families do too, conscious of and fearing evil influences.

Some of us do at times feel attacked by evil, or sense themselves to be in the midst of a war—but how often do we genuinely associate that with the devil’s workings?

Satan and satanism are also real, but they are understood somewhat differently these days. As a cult it sometimes flares up through the media when a crime has been committed that appears to have strange elements.

There are experts on this subject and the Church appoints exorcists dedicated to the work of deliverance and casting out of demons as there is no doubt that evil exists in the world and even in the

Church too—something Fr Gabriele Amorth, Rome’s former chief exorcist who died this month, often emphasised.

It has been claimed that the devil’s first priority is attacking and destroying family life.

Pope Francis himself does preach about the devil. Early in his pontificate, in 2013, he blessed a sculpture of St Michael in the Vatican gardens and then placed Vatican City under St Michael’s protection.

During a 2015 visit to a Harlem school in New York he told children that the devil is a killjoy who tries to spoil their dreams and destroy their happiness.

“Where there are dreams and where there is joy, Jesus is always present,” Pope Francis said. But “the devil sows sadness, distrust, envy and evil desires”.

He also said that a shield of faith is needed because the devil doesn’t throw flowers at us but flaming arrows to kill us.

He does not kill the body but infects our spirits.

B

ut our focus should be on the angels, also God’s creatures. Michael tends to take the front seat, but his fellow archangels and other angels have their place too.

Gabriel, the messenger, is associated in the New Testament with the whole in-

angels still have a place in Catholic spirituality, argues Toni Rowland

Ready! Aim! Fire!

M ANY years ago, I was observing at close quarters a potential merger between two huge telecoms companies, one American, the other British.

The difference in corporate culture was very evident.

An American negotiator was teasing his counterpart one day that the Brits spent so much time making plans, they never actually delivered them. “Your problem,” he said in his Yankee drawl, “is that it’s always ‘Ready, aim, aim, aim…’—but you never actually fire!” The Brit retorted: “Well, it’s better than your strategy: ‘Fire, ready, aim!’”

Needless to say, the merger never happened. Almost 20 years on, the US company has imploded in a web of corporate mismanagement. The British company has survived—but it has never achieved its full potential and just limps along.

I was reminded of this recently when involved in various planning exercises. There is definitely a part of South African culture that is like the American example above, the “gung ho” approach. This is hardly surprising when you recall that so much of the country was built on mining. You don’t become a millionaire by arriving second at the seam of gold. So an approach that is based on action is more likely to succeed — and you just accept that there will also be some failures on the way.

But an awful lot of South Africa—some companies, most of the NGOs and Church world, and all of government—seems to be stuck at “Ready, aim, aim, aim”, and they never get round to pulling the trigger.

I lost two days of my life recently as one of the few outside guests invited to attend the planning meeting of a fairly substantial department of the eThekwini (Durban) municipality. They were setting themselves performance targets and—I kid you not— one of the targets was that they would “commit to explore the possibility of X”.

So a department that has consistently failed to do what it was created for will hold itself accountable based on whether or not it “explored the possibility” of something. How could they possibly fail to meet such a vague target?

“Talking” is held in such high regard in public life. It starts with the multiple talk shops of parliament, legislature and assembly; continues down to community meet-

Endless meetings that do not manage to set tangible goals will lead to lost opportunities and failure, Raymond Perrier writes. ings and in organisations; and finds it lowwater mark on talk radio. In each case the key mark of success is whether or not something was talked about extensively—not whether a useful conclusion was reached.

Was an actionable plan put together? Were changes made that would actually benefit those in need? No, apparently it’s enough that “all views were heard”.

This, of course, is part of an even greater deceit: “All views are equally important”.

Are they really? If I suspect that I have a brain tumour, I am going to seek out the views of a highly trained expert. I won’t spend any time canvassing the opinions of my accountant, my brother-in-law, or the man phoning in from Benoni.

A

fter centuries in which only a few voices counted in South Africa—and those predominately were white, male, heterosexual and Protestant—you can see why hearing a wider range of voices is important. But discussion should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Instead we get trapped in a two-stage process of putting off action for as long as possible. We talk and talk and talk, and finally set some sort of vaguely worded goal.

And then we formulate a plan, or sometimes several plans, each one more elaborate than the last, and make sure that there is plenty of opportunity to canvas opinion on the plan, have stakeholder meetings and probably produce further drafts of the plan. Anything to avoid actually doing something concrete in the real world.

I think that it is the fear of accountabil-

Toni Rowland

Family Friendly

fancy narrative of the Annunciation and birth of Jesus, as well as giving messages to Joseph in his dreams.

Raphael, who is patron of travellers and also of the medical profession, could have his work cut out more fully to assist us in preserving life and many other medical and bioethical issues.

In his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), the Holy Father acknowledges the value of different forms of traditional piety in families. These are often cultural, with different countries or groups having different devotions and traditions.

It is sad that devotion to our Guardian Angels seems to have dissipated. In his homily in 2015 on the feast of the Guardian Angels the pope reminded those present that our Guardian Angels are always present with us. They are ambassadors from God and our response is to respect and listen as they “guard and guide” us, as we used to pray.

One of my favourite childhood memories is singing one particular beautiful song about the angels’ watch. The words go more or less like this: When children go to sleep at night their angels watch over them. In the morning, when children awake, the angels can rest because God, the loving and merciful Father, himself keeps watch.

Angels, like saints, take nothing away from God but are God’s agents. Sometimes it is maybe little more than a nice tradition to honour them.

However, as family people we might well take Archangel Michael’s role especially to heart: to recognise the forms of evil around us, and with growing faith and conviction pray for his protection from evil.

This can challenge us to examine our own actions too. The Church, the world and our families certainly need it.

Raymond Perrier

Faith and Society

ity that results in the “analysis paralysis”.

If I do something it might not work and I will be held responsible for the failure. But if I discuss things and plan them, then I can always point to this as “activity”. And it is hard to prove that any discussion or plan has failed if it is not actually implemented.

It is easy to mock government officials for falling into this trap. They do so because we let them get away with it; or, until recently, we struggled to imagine an alternative.

However, some of the new mayors that have recently taken office have decided that they do need to start acting if they are going to change anything. Five-year terms pass quickly.

Meantime, we need to get our own house in order. Do we as Church people— dioceses, parishes, sodalities, religious communities, NGOs—spend most of our time talking or acting? Do we hold ourselves and others accountable? Are we aware of the opportunities that we miss?

“Love,” St Ignatius of Loyola reminds us, “is seen more in deeds than in words”— and he was the founder of the Jesuits, an order that is generally not shy of words!

Some reach for the excuse that the Church operates sub specie aeternitatis (from the perspective of eternity). And it is true that the Kingdom may not come in our lifetime. But thankfully there were many who went before us and built churches and schools and clinics without setting eternity as their target date. They responded directly to the needs in front of them.

Pope Francis, it seems, is a man who also has a clear target date. He knows he will not be pope forever, so he has a mission to build some part of the Kingdom within his own lifetime.

That, of course, is a mission that each one of us has. Not to talk about the works of mercy; not even just to plan works of mercy; but to deliver works of mercy in our place, in our generation, using whatever resources the Lord has chosen to give us until he holds us each accountable: “for what we have done and for what we have failed to do...”

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

19

Michael Shackleton

Open door

The bishop’s heavy cross Sometimes I smile when I see pictures of our bishops wearing the emblematic cross on a chain prominent on their chests. Surely this is an uncomfortable and unnecessary ornament.

What is the origin of this custom?

H Wren

I

T is more than a custom. The Pontificale Romanum, which gives the directives for the dress and insignia of a bishop of the Roman Rite, requires the bishop to wear the pectoral cross as part of his usual dress code.

This was not always the case. It was only after the year 326, when the Christian empress St Helena reputedly discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem, that a kind of fad began in which Christians took to wearing little crosses around their necks.

These were of simple design but if they contained a tiny relic of the True Cross they were normally embellished with precious metal and jewellery. This lent them a devotional aura so that they were treated with reverence.

In the late 4th century St Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, noted that some of these crosses were made of gold as a fitting container for their sacred relic.

It seems that the first bishops to sport the cross were from the Eastern Church. They probably did so not to show off their rank but to indicate their commitment to their vocation and the cross of their Lord, because there is no evidence that the cross was then part of the bishop’s insignia of office.

Bishops in the West soon began to wear ornamental crosses too, generally containing relics of either the True Cross or some saint. But then Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) claimed that he alone, as the successor of St Peter, had the exclusive right to wear the pectoral cross as a mark of his primacy.

Bishops continued to wear the cross around their necks but more as an ornament than as a badge of office. In the pope’s presence they were not permitted to wear it.

It was only in the 17th century that official liturgical books recognised the bishop’s right to wear the pectoral cross as a symbol of his authority.

I have never thought of asking a bishop if he finds the cross too heavy on his chest. Bishops seem comfortable enough to me, when they are in their cassocks or in their vestments.

When they are in their business suits, some bishops choose to place the cross in an inside pocket of their jacket to prevent it from sliding around, especially when driving a car.

Of course, the cross on the chest is not a necessity. Neither is the ring on his finger nor the Roman collar, but it is the bishop’s traditional distinguishing symbol of status in the hierarchy of the Church.

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.

VIVA SAFARIS KRUGER PARK with

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20

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

The Southern Cross/Radio Veritas pilgrims carry the South african flag on their way to the canonisation of St Teresa of Kolkata in the Vatican.

TRAVEL

Four priests in one pilgrimage, seen here after Mass in the Porziuncola of assisi’s St Mary of the angels basilica: (from left) spiritual director Fr Brian Mhlanga OP, Fr John Selemela (vice-rector of St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria), Fr Thembalethu Mana of Port Elizabeth, and Fr Mbulelo Qumnto of Mthatha.

Fr Brian Mhlanga preaches at Mass in greccio, the place in central italy’s Rieti Valley where St Francis staged the first nativity scene. The Mass was offered for Franciscan Father Bonaventure Hinwood, who had died that morning. The Southern Cross will return to greccio with archbishop William Slattery OFM next September.

Canonisation Pilgrimage in photos

The group twice had the opportunity to venerate the relics of St Teresa of Kolkata, at the exposition at St John lateran basilica (above) and the following day at the church of St gregory. The pilgrims are seen below waiting to pray at the relics at the latter church. at the monastery attached to the church they also saw the sparse room in which Mother Teresa would stay when in Rome.

T St Peter’s basilica at the canonisation of Mother Teresa. it was the second canonisation pilgrimage offered by The Southern Cross and Radio Veritas, following that to the canonisation of St John XXiii and St John Paul ii in 2014.

The

HIS month some 42 Southern Cross/Radio Veritas pilgrims attended the canonisation of St Teresa of Kolkata and Thanksgiving Mass in the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square, venerated the new saint’s relics at two churches, crossed the holy doors of Rome’s four major basilicas and two in Assisi, and visited several places associated with St Francis, among many other great experiences.

The pilgrimage was led by Dominican Father Brian Mhlanga of Radio Veritas, who deputised for Fr Emil Blaser OP, who for health reasons was unable to travel. Three other priests were part of the group. (Photos courtesy of Fowler Tours)

S outher n C ross Announcing a special pilgrimage to

Holy Land • Rome • Assisi September 2017

with

Archbishop William Slattery OFM Contact Gail for more information at info@fowlertours.co.za or 076 352 3809

Pilgrims enter the ancient chapel of St Mary Magdalene at Fonte Colombo in the Rieti Valley. it was already there when St Francis wrote the Rule for his order in a nearby cave. The saint would have prayed often in this tiny chapel.

above: Pilgrims pray before the original icon of Our lady of Perpetual Help in Rome’s church of St alphonsus liguori, where they also had Mass.

Right: They also prayed in the chapel of the Marian icon of Salus Populi Romani in the basilica of St Mary Major, which Pope Francis visits before and after each foreign trip.

Frs Mhlanga, Selemela, Mana and (obscured) Qumnto are seen during the blessings of the gifts on the final evening of the pilgrimage in assisi. The ceremony is an important part of a pilgrimage, blessing not only the religious articles but also those who will use them. as Fr Mhlanga blessed the items with holy water, the group sang a hymn.

The group walks up the Eremo delle Carceri, the hermitage near assisi in which St Francis and his companions stayed. it is the place where St Francis preached to the birds.

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The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

21

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The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

ART

Catholic colouring books for grown-ups?

Colouring books are not just for children anymore.

Specially designed colouring books now provide adults with a new type of hobby—with Catholic versions now under production, as MaRy REZaC reports.

C

OLOURING books for adults have exploded on to the bookstore scene in the past two years. What was once considered a hobby for the kids is now all the rage for people who are full-grown.

While the most popular books out there feature images of gardens, forests and beautiful patterns, Ave Maria Press in the US and Catholic artist Daniel Mitsui are creating adult colouring books that draw from something else: the tradition of medieval Catholic art.

Mr Mitsui, who lives in Chicago with his wife and their three children, specialises in ink drawing and describes his style as very graphic, with “precise edges and sharp outlines”.

He’s heavily inspired by Catholic art from the 14th and 15th centuries, but is also influenced by the graphic elements of Japanese art, particularly with how it treats light and shadow.

While Mr Mitsui hadn’t paid much attention to the adult colouring book trend at first, he has done a lot of work in black and white, which works well for the medium.

He would print a lot of images in black and white and then colour

Medieval Catholic art colouring book (left) created by Catholic artist daniel Mitsui (right). them in to sell as hand-coloured images, and he would give his children the extra prints, or the prints that didn’t turn out just right, for them to colour.

“I would save all of the ones that didn’t pass my quality control, and I would give them to my kids to colour at Mass,” he said.

“I have small children who have a hard time paying attention so I would give them some of these colouring sheets. And friends of mine started asking for them and I thought, you know, I should really make this available to the public.”

With this in mind, Mr Mitsui started adding the black and white images—usually of saints or other religious images—to his website, so that parents could access them for their kids and leave a little donation.

Almost immediately, he was contacted by Ave Maria publishing company about creating a book for adults.

H

is first book features images from the mysteries of the rosary. Mr Mitsui had been privately commissioned for a project on the rosary a few years back, and so he said it was easy to compile those images and create a colouring book with a unifying theme.

There are plans for another book soon, featuring colourable images of the saints. While the book will include many of the main players—the Virgin Mary, Ss Peter and Paul, Michael the Archangel—it will also include some more obscure figures like St Robert of Newminster, St Gobnait, and St Hugh of Lincoln.

While many of Mr Mitsui’s images in the colouring books come from privately commissioned pieces he’s done in the past, some of them also come from images he’s created as part of lessons for his children, who are home-schooled.

Mr Mitsui said that he finds it unnecessary to divide colouring books into categories for children and adults. Children deserve, and equally enjoy, the beautiful and more intricate images that are often only marketed to adults, he said.

“I don’t think that you should say, well, we have these really sophisticated colouring books with detailed art, and we’re going to give these to adults, and then we present things that have artwork in them that we don’t really think is that good, and then give those to kids,” he said.

“There’s so many children’s picture books that are really beautiful and really sophisticated, but they kind of get drowned out by so many ones that are sort of insipid, and I don’t think that that’s right,” he added. “Kids like to see detailed images, they can actually appreciate serious art.”

The sudden upsurge in the popularity of colouring books for adults has fascinated everyone from researchers to art therapists to yoga and meditation connoisseurs.

Mr Mitsui said he’s excited about the trend, because it may mean that more adults are acknowledging their desire to express themselves creatively.

“It seems there’s an idea that a lot of adults have that drawing or making art is something that you do when you’re a child, and then unless you become a professional you kind of give it up,” he said. “And I think

that’s just sort of a poverty...I don’t know why there’s a reluctance on the part of so many adults to create artwork.”

Drawing used to be the fashionable thing for adults to do in the Victorian era, he added. Many adults, particularly women, had their own sketchbooks and honed their drawing skills.

“I think what that demonstrates is that a lot of what goes into being an artist is skill that is learnable with practice,” Mr Mitsui said. For Catholics in particular, a Catholic adult colouring book is a way to become familiar with the rich tradition of Catholic art in a way that is different from viewing a painting in a museum, he said.

“The Catholic Church has such a superabundance of wealth in terms of its artistic tradition, that sometimes it can get lost when it’s just sort of viewed as data,” he said.

“I’m interested in medieval religious art, and I think the art of that era certainly is very rich in terms of what it can teach you about the Catholic religion in that it’s very precise theologically, it corroborates the writings of the Church fathers, it corroborates the liturgy. So you see all of the Catholic tradition more clearly if you’re familiar with its presentation,” he said.

“It’s a way to train yourself to really look at art and I think to really look at anything,” he added. “That more concentrated vision is something that is quite peculiar in a mass media age.”

Mr Mitsui’s book, The Mysteries of the Rosary is available online www.avemariapress.com. His book featuring the saints will be published by Ave Maria Press in November.—CNA

CLASSIFIEDS

Fr Didier Michon M.Afr

M

ISSIONARIES of Africa Father Didier Michon died in Paris, France, on September 6 at the age of 81.

Fr Michon, a Frenchman who served 55 years as a missionary, arrived in South Africa in September 1990 in answer to a call made to the Society, to minister to the displaced Mozambicans who had sought refuge on the South African side of the border; away from a devastating and crippling civil war.

The place chosen for this new missionary initiative was Lebombo; a sprawling area of tin shacks and hunger, where the Church had not been established.

This was pioneering missionary work and Fr Didier took to it with an enthusiasm that never waned in his 25 years or so in South Africa.

He was a man of deep prayer, who loved community life and above all, a pastoral agent whose love for the people and his con-

cern to help them was deeply appreciated.

Lebombo carved out a special place in his heart and, although he would work in other places, Lebombo was his true home in South Africa.

He moved onto Siyabuswa in KwaNdebele in the Pretoria archdiocese in 2001, to a situation very similar to what he had experienced in Lebombo.

Liturgical Calendar Year C – Weekdays Cycle Year 2 Sunday October 2 Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4, Psalms 95:1-2, 6-9, 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14, Luke 17:5-10 Monday October 3 Galatians 1:6-12, Psalms 111:1-2, 7-10, Luke 10:25-37 Tuesday October 4, St Francis of Assisi Galatians 1: 13-24, Psalms 139: 1-3, 1315, Luke 10: 38-42 Wednesday October 5 Galatians 2:1-2, 714, Psalms 117, Luke 11:1-4 Thursday October 6, St Bruno Galatians 3:1-5, Responsorial psalm Luke 1:6975, Luke 11:5-13 Friday October 7, Our Lady of the Rosary Acts 1:12-14, Luke 1:46-55, Luke 1:26-38 Saturday October 8, Saturday Mass of Our Lady Galatians 3:22-29, Psalms 105:2-7, Luke 11:2728 Sunday October 9 2 Kings 5:14-17, Psalms 98:1-4, 2 Timothy 2:813, Luke 17:11-19

OR FOR D

CONSTRUCTION

He brought to the people of Siyabuswa what he had brought to the people of Lebombo and was as much appreciated.

Open heart surgery in 2002 slowed him up somewhat but never dampened his enthusiasm and after a further eight years in Siyabuswa he returned for another four years to Lebombo.

It was in the Edenglen community in Johannesburg that he would see out his remaining years in South Africa.

There he took on a shared responsibility of guest-master. The warmth of his welcome and the willingness to go the extra mile for guests became a hallmark of his caring nature.

The choice to return to France in 2014 was his, aware as he was, that the weight of missionary life was slowly taking its toll.

The man is gone but his memory will live on and be cherished by many in South Africa.

Seán O’Leary M.Afr

Southern CrossWord solutions SOLUTIONS TO 726. ACROSS: 3 Obstinate, 8 Oboe, 9 Mandatory, 10 Gilgal, 11 Myrrh, 14 Reams, 15 Euro, 16 Elude, 18 Ends, 20 Crude, 21 Youth, 24 Cannon, 25 Plutocrat, 26 Stir, 27 Ugly state. DOWN: 1 Forgeries, 2 Foolhardy, 4 Baal, 5 Today, 6 Nature, 7 Tyre, 9 Manse, 11 Mouth, 12 Huguenots, 13 Governors, 17 Eclat, 19 Softly, 22 Tacit, 23 Plug, 24 Cart.

The Southern Cross, September 28 to October 4, 2016

CLASSIFIEDS

23

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.

CONGRATULATIONS

DRYDEN DOORS—Congratulates The Southern Cross on the publication of its 5 000th edition.

McEVOY—Kevin J. Congratulates The Southern Cross on its 5 000th edition. in memory of his grandfather PETER LEAHY, a founding shareholder of The Southern Cross.

PRAYERS

O MOST Holy Virgin Mary, who chose to appear on the Sierra de aire, in the Cova de iria, to three young shepherds to reveal the treasures of grace held in the recitation of the Rosary, impress upon our souls a fervent love for this devotion. By meditating on the

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

mysteries of our redemption, may we learn how to use the teachings which lie therein and obtain the graces we ask in this prayer. For the glory of god and the redeeming of our souls. amen. novena from 5 to 13 each month.

For prayers/hymns write to jjvcamara@gmail.com 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.

“CAN I PRAY FOR YOU” an initiative to pray for each other. Please sms your prayer requests to 078 250 8226—you may request prayers anonymously, or leave your first name with your request. let’s pray that god will open doors and create moments when we extend his grace to others.

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the

28th Sunday: October 9 Readings: 2 Kings 5:14-17, Psalm 98:1-4, 2 Timothy 2:8-13, Luke 17:11-19

W

E shall not get our lives right unless we recognise the unfailingly attentive presence of God, right in the heart of things. That is what next Sunday’s readings seem to be telling us.

In the first reading, the Syrian general Naaman has been given a lesson in humility, and discovered that the God of Israel is the only God, so that when, in accordance with Elisha’s instructions, he went down seven times into the Jordan, “his flesh became as the flesh of a little child”.

The word for “child” here is the same Hebrew word that the narrator had used for the little Hebrew slave who had advised him to approach Elisha. The result is that he turns up, with his entire caravanserai, to thank the “man of God” and tell him “now I know that there is no other god in all the earth but only in Israel”.

So, having recognised the presence of God, he now asks for a blessing, and offers a gift, which Elisha firmly refuses. Then instead he asks for some of the soil of the Holy Land, “because your servant will not offer any holo-

S outher n C ross

Attentive presence of God caust or sacrifice to other gods, but only to the Lord”.

The psalmist is always attentive to the attentive presence of God: “To the Lord, sing a new song, for he has done marvels; his right hand and his holy arm have won victory for himself.” Then he mentions God’s faithful presence: “He has remembered his steadfast love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.”

We are invited to celebrate that presence: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.”

The second reading, from 2 Timothy, starts with a memory of the event above all that signals God’s “attentive presence”: “Remember Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead.”

Paul is in prison, “but God’s word is not chained. This is why I put up with everything, on account of God’s chosen ones”.

And God’s attentive presence is not just for Jesus, but for us also: “If we died with [him] then we shall also live with [him]; if we endure, then we shall be kings with [him].” And Paul is well aware that we human beings are not always as attentive to God as God is to us:

“Even if we are faithless, [God] remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself.”

So we have to be attentive to God’s action in our lives, and that is what next Sunday’s Gospel models for us. Jesus is on his “journey” to Jerusalem, and we already know that this means death. Then comes what looks like a perfectly normal (except for the numbers involved) healing: “There met him ten leper men, who stood a long way off and lifted up their voices and said, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us’.” Jesus wastes absolutely no time on them, simply orders them: “On your way, show yourselves to the priests.”

Then the undramatic report: “It happened as they went that they were purified.” However, they do not seem to have taken any notice of God’s attentive presence. There was, however, one exception, who “seeing that he was healed came back with a loud voice glorifying God. And he fell on his face at [Jesus”] feet, thanking him”. Then comes Luke’s significant comment: “And he was a Samaritan”.

Only now, however, do we get the moral

Truth about indulgences W

the heavy burden of sin. Though we feel the transforming powered of grace, we also feel the effects of sin typical of our fallen state,” the pope writes.

“Despite being forgiven, the conflicting consequences of our sins remain. In the sacrament of reconciliation, God forgives our sins, which he truly blots out; and yet sin leaves a negative effect on the way we think and act.

“But the mercy of God is stronger even than this. It becomes an indulgence on the part of the Father who, through the Bride of Christ, his Church, reaches the pardoned sinner and frees him from every residue left by the consequence of sin, enabling him to act in charity, to grow in love rather than to fall back into sin.

“The Church lives within the communion of the saints. In the Eucharist, this communion, which is a gift from God, becomes a spiritual union binding us to the saints and the blessed ones whose number is beyond counting (Rev 7, 14). Their holiness comes to the aid of our weaknesses in a way that enables the Church, with her maternal prayers and her way of life, to fortify the weakness of some with the strength of others,” Pope Francis writes.

“Hence, to live the indulgence of the Holy Year means to approach the Father’s mercy with the certainty that his forgiveness extends to the entire life of the believer. To gain an indulgence is to experience the holiness of the Church,

Conrad

HEN Pope Francis launched the Holy Year of Mercy, he promised that Christians could gain a special indulgence during this year.

That left a lot of present-day Catholics, and even more Protestants and Evangelicals, scratching their heads and asking some hard questions: “Is Roman Catholicism still dealing in indulgences? Didn’t we learn anything from Luther and the Reformation? Do we really believe that certain ritual practices, like passing through designated church doors, will ease our way into heaven?”

These are valid questions that need to be asked. What, indeed, is an indulgence?

Pope Francis in his decree “The Face of Mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus) says this about indulgences: “A Jubilee also entails the granting of indulgences. This practice will acquire an even more important meaning in the Holy Year of Mercy. God’s forgiveness knows no bounds.

“In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God makes even more evident his love and its power to destroy all human sin. Reconciliation with God is made possible through the paschal mystery and the mediation of the Church. Thus God is always ready to forgive, and he never tires of forgiving in ways that are continually new and surprising.

“Nevertheless, all of us know well the experience of sin. We know that we are called to perfection (Mt 5:48), yet we feel

Nicholas King SJ

Sunday Reflections

of the story, for Jesus comments: “Were not the ten of them purified?” Then he reflects on the “other nine”, whom the story clearly assumes to be Jews: “Were they not found to come back and give glory to God, but only this immigrant?”

Here we get to the heart of the matter, that of attentiveness to God, for he said to him: “Rise up and be on your way—your faith has saved you.” There are at least two things to say about this. The first is that “rise up” is a Resurrection word, and Luke’s first hearers would not have missed that.

The second is that “your faith has saved you” clearly cannot mean that the other nine have been returned to their leprous state. It is, rather, that the healing is not complete until it is understood as part of God’s action; “glorifying God” should be our regular attitude, gratefully recognising what has been done for us.

Southern Crossword #726

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI

Final Reflection

who bestows upon all the fruits of Christ’s redemption, so that God’s love and forgiveness may extend everywhere. Let us live this Jubilee intensely, begging the Father to forgive our sins and to bathe us in his merciful ‘indulgence’.”.

W

hat’s the pope saying here? Clearly, he’s not teaching what has been for so long the popular (and inaccurate notion) that an indulgence is a way of shortening one’s time in purgatory.

Rather, he is tying the idea of indulgences to two things: First, an indulgence is the acceptance and celebration of the wonderful gratuity of God’s mercy. An indulgence is, in effect, the conscious acceptance of a love, a mercy and a forgiveness that is completely undeserved.

Love can be indulgent. Parents can be indulgent to their children.

Thus, whenever we do a prayer or religious practice with the intent of gaining an indulgence, the idea is that this prayer or practice is meant to make us more consciously aware of and grateful for God’s indulgent mercy.

We live within an incredible, ineffable mercy of which we are mostly unaware.

During the Holy Year of Mercy, Pope Francis invites us to do some special prayers and practices that make us more consciously aware of that indulgent mercy.

Beyond this, Pope Francis links the notion of indulgences to another concept, namely, our union and solidarity with each other inside the Body Christ.

As Christians, we believe that we are united with each other in a deep, invisible, spiritual and organic bond that is so real that it forms us into one body, with the same flow of life and the same flow of blood flowing through all of us.

Thus, inside the Body of Christ, as in all live organisms, there is one immune system so that what one person does, for good or for bad, affects the whole body.

Hence, as the pope asserts, since there is a single immune system inside the Body of Christ, the strength of some can fortify the weakness of others who thereby receive an indulgence, an undeserved grace.

To walk through a holy door is to make ourselves more consciously aware of God’s indulgent mercy and of the wonderful community of life within which we live.

aCROss

3. Stubborn treatment of saint-to-be (9) 8. Hobo easily holds instrument (4) 9. And to Mary this is compulsory (9) 10. Place where the people camped (Josh 4) (6) 11. An original Christmas gift (5) 14. Large supplies of paper (5) 15. Currency of Rome (4) 16. Escape from (5) 18. Extreme terminals (4) 20. Coarse and raw like oil (5) 21. He’s not yet an adult (5) 24. Weapon sounding when the cleric is named (6) 25. Dwarf planet start for a wealthy ruler (9) 26. Agitate a storm in a teacup? (4) 27. Unattractive condition resulting from late gusty storm (4,5)

Solutions on page 23

DOWn

1. Banknotes from a fraudulent source (9) 2. Jester with robust following is reckless (9) 4. There were 450 of this god’s prophets (1 Kg 18) (4) 5. Now in the calendar (5) 6. Mother of what’s animal, vegetable and mineral (6) 7. Is it in contact with the roads of ancient city? (4) 9. House of the Presbyterian minister (5) 11. You are not defiled by what goes into it (Mt 15) (5) 12. He outguns the Protestants (9) 13. They controlled the Roman Empire (9) 17. Among the clatter there is brilliance (5) 19. How to boil egg quietly (6) 22. Unspoken and implied (5) 23. It keeps water in your basin (4) 24. About the end of 25 across there is transport (4)

CHURCH CHUCKLE

T

HE children were lined up in the cafeteria of a Catholic primary school for lunch. At the head of the table was a large pile of apples.

The nun made a note, and posted it on the apple tray: “Take only ONE. God is watching.”

Moving further along the lunch line, at the other end of the table was a large pile of chocolate chip biscuits.

A child had written a note: “Take all you want.

God is watching the apples.”

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