202011

NTHABISENG MAPHISA: How well is my soul?

SAINT OF THE MONTH: St Martin de Porres

BISHOP SIPUKA: Beware corruption in Church

Southern Cross

Est. 1920

The

WE ARE

The Catholic Magazine for Southern Africa

November 2020

R30 (incl. VAT in SA)

Centenary Issue

100!

A special issue to celebrate ... and much more THE GREAT HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS

SAINTS IN FOCUS: HOW LIVE MODELS ‘BECOME’ SAINTS

2

The Southern Cross

Welcome

A hundred years and counting Dear Reader,

S

HOULD YOU HAPPEN TO BE A NEW READER OF The Southern Cross, you may wonder at the paradox that a magazine in only its second-ever edition should be celebrating its 100th birthday. The reason, of course, is that for 99 years, 11 months and a week, The Southern Cross was a national weekly newspaper.

That was more than 5 200 weeks of publication since that first issue came out on October 16, 1920, with not a single week missed — even through the Great Depression, World War II, the social upheaval of apartheid, successions of strikes, the collapse of postal services, and even the coronavirus lockdown. It is a history worth honouring, as we are doing in this issue.

In doing so, we will indulge in a little nostalgia while at the same time acknowledging that even history that invites fond memories is always liable to be stained by what some of us would prefer to forget. The Southern Cross has some of its own dark spots, of course.

When I rummage through old volumes of this newspaper — a wonderful past-time — I sometimes stop short at how things were expressed in decades past. Even as recently as 1989, The Southern Cross accepted an election ad for a candidate of the National Party. That lost the newspaper many friends, and rightly so.

But those incidents did not define the publication.

For the most part, The Southern Cross was in the service of God and his People. It was a loyal service, performed by people of great faith.

It was 25 years ago that The Southern Cross celebrated its 75th anniversary. At that time some of the readers from the newspaper’s early years were still alive, including Frank Anderson of Johannesburg, then 90, who said he had read every edition since the very first one.

Also among the early readers were an Irish-born lighthouse keeper and his wife: Denis and Theresa Hurley. We know that they read The Southern Cross because in the 1920s, their children Denis and Eileen were members of its “Children’s Corner”, run by the great theologian Mgr Frederick Kolbe. He would give all correspondents a nickname: Denis was “Robin”, Eileen “Tiger Lily”. The Hurley family is pictured in our

S outhern Cross The

monthly “History in Colour” feature.

Young Denis, who was baptised by future Southern Cross editor Mgr John Colgan, would go on to become South Africa’s greatest bishop. He remained a lifelong friend of The Southern Cross.

Archbishop Hurley would have mourned the demise of the weekly newspaper, but he doubtless would have liked the new magazine. The feedback from the first issue was overwhelmingly positive. Sydney Duval, a veteran journalist and astute judge of his craft, was generous in his assessment: “The vision of text, photographs, graphics, colours, white space and layout floats from the page into your head and fills it with good news, with the promise of more good reading and images to come. The outward signs become inner signs.

The vineyard that you labour in has produced a vintage crop for all to taste and consume. You have given us a moment to rejoice in, to celebrate in a time of hardship and distress. In a flash, the way forward seems much brighter.”

These are warm words which encourage our small team which produces this magazine. But they also invest in us a challenge and responsibility to live up to a good first impression. We are committed to doing so — always in the service of God and his People.

But our efforts can go only so far in keeping The Southern Cross alive in this precarious moment of its long existence. We need the help of the Catholic community, from the bishops to the faithful in the pew, to support and promote this magazine. Tell others about it. Make sure it is on sale in your parish, or maybe through your sodality. Together we can make The Southern Cross survive and thrive!

Thank you for reading The Southern Cross!

Yours in Christ,

Günther Simmermacher (Editor)

LEADERSHIP TEAM Editor: Günther Simmermacher editor@scross.co.za Digital Editor: Claire Allen c.allen@scross.co.za Business Manager: Pamela Davids admin@scross.co.za Advisory Editor: Michael Shackleton

BOARD OF DIRECTORS: R Shields (Chair), Bishop S Sipuka, Bp S David OMI (alt), S Duval, E Jackson, B Jordan, Sr H Makoro CPS, C Mathieson, N Mpushe*, R Perrier *, D Shikwambana*, G Stubbs

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The Southern Cross is published by the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Co. Ltd (Reg. No: 1920/002058/06)

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The Catholic magazine for Southern Africa • Est. 1920 Annual subscriptions: Print & Digital: R480 (SA); Digital only: R300; Print only: R480 (SA)

Published Monthly

Contents NOVEMBER 2020

7

What’s a Third Order?

In his series of articles on sodalities, Fr S’milo Mngadi looks at lay religious

23 Tips for a great Advent Advent is almost here, and now is the time to prepare with these great tips

26 A missionary life in Pretoria Daluxolo Moloantoa writes about the life of a missionary who set up important missions in Pretoria and Johannesburg

28 Catholic print in SA

12 100 years of The Southern Cross

Sydney Duval looks at the impact of Catholic publications in South Africa

34 Corruption in the Church Bishop Sithembele Sipuka argues that the Church must be clean inside if it wants to criticise dirt outside

35 Reflection for November Fr Runaine Radine reflects on our prayers for the dead in the month of November

EVERY MONTH 6

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED You ask, and our team of experts replies

31 THE MILLENNIAL CATHOLIC Nthabiseng Maphisa on the state of her soul

24 How a photographer

creates modern saints

32 RAYMOND PERRIER advises us to use technology and common sense

33 FR RON ROLHEISER OMI on the ordinary faces of evil

36 PRAY WITH THE POPE Fr Chris Chatteris SJ on robots and the future

37 THE PRAYER CORNER Illustrated prayers: To cut out and collect

38 Trivia Quiz, Crossword, Word Search 40 History in Colour, Church Chuckle 4

The Southern Cross

8

Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti in brief

19

The saint who faced racism

FROM OUR VAULTS 62 Years Ago: November 12, 1958

New pope meets SA archbishop

Two days after receiving the triple tiara in his globally televised coronation, Pope John XXIII received Archbishop Owen McCann of Cape Town and his secretary, Fr Jerry McMorrow, in an audience. The new pope conveyed a blessing to the people of South Africa. In a telegram to The Southern Cross, Archbishop McCann said Pope John showed great interest in the problems of South Africa and said he would pray for a speedy solution.

5 million words

In the 19 days between the late Pope Pius XII’s stroke to the eve of the conclave to elect his successor, at least 5 million words were sent abroad in press dispatches from Rome, almost all about the papacy, according to the director of Radio Stampa, which transmits overseas press messages.

The Vatican Press Office reported having 560 correspondents and 400 photographers on its list.

Catholic bowlers get together

At a meeting of Catholic bowlers held at The Wanderers, it was decided to form a Catholic Bowlers’ Association for the diocese of Johannesburg, whose bishop, Hugh Boyle, will be its patron.

Convent was a hotel once

Pullou t poster !

The Holy Family Sisters’ Belgrave convent in Kimberley celebrated its silver jubilee with a High Mass, followed by Lady Oppenheimer officially opening the new classrooms which are largely sponsored by De Beers. The Sisters arrived in Kimberley in 1879, and in 1933 took over the Belgrave convent, previously the Belgrave Hotel — in which the Oppenheimers stayed when first married. [The Sisters moved out in 1969; it’s now the McGregor Museum.]

What else happened in November 1958:

• Chad, Congo, Gabon, Mali (French Sudan), Mauritania and Senegal all gain independence from France.

• Charles de Gaulle’s Union for the New Republic wins 42,5% in the French national assembly, paving the way for his election by a coalition of parties as president in December.

• A month after becoming South Africa’s first Miss World, Penny Coelen appears as a guest on the US TV game show To Tell the Truth.

• The first bossa nova record is released in Brazil: João Gilberto’s “Chega de Saudade”.

• US actor Tyrone Power dies on November 15 at the age of 44.

Left: The Maher family of Malvern in Johannesburg is pictured with their daughter Teresa, who as Sr Mary Anthony has entered the novitiate of the Missionary Sisters of the Assumption in Grahamstown. The family is photographed in the convent.

Right: An advert for the latest Simca Vedette, a French car that was made from 1954-61.

The Southern Cross

5

Your Questions answered

? out our faith questions ab n tio ca Do you have lo me and with your na Send them scross.co.za to: editor@ Q&A Subject line:

Who is the HEAD of the Catholic Church in SA? Q. We have a cardinal, but we also have the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) with a president, currently Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha. But who is the actual head of the Catholic Church in South Africa?

T

HE SHORT ANSWER IS: Nobody. The Catholic Church is headed by the pope, and under him and his dicasteries of the Holy See, The head of the Catholic Church with some ecclesial authority is in the of the heads of Southern Africa’s dioceses. hands of the bishops (or ordinaries) of all the world’s diogives its holder no extraordinary auceses. Unless a diocese happens to thority outside the jurisdiction of his cover a whole country, as is the case own diocese (a metropolitan archin Eswatini, we cannot speak of a bishop has limited and defined powhead of a country’s Church. Locally, ers in his suffragan dioceses) all authority is in the hands of the A cardinal might use the standparticular diocese’s bishop. ing of his rank to assert his will, but Together, the bishops of a cerhe has no particular rights of authortain territory form a conference, and ity over the affairs of other dioceses. within that union of bishops, deciHis rank gives a cardinal extra honsions can be made for collective imours and privileges of protocol and plementation — but even then, these garments, and he also has the reare not binding in canon law. The sponsibility of taking on roles within president of the SACBC cannot force the Roman curia and electing popes the bishop of a diocese to implement — but in terms of authority he is these decisions (though he can exert equal to all other archbishops. pressure on him to do so).

(Günther Simmermacher) Likewise, the rank of cardinal

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The Southern Cross

Q. Some Evangelicals claim that their churches interpret the Scriptures literally whereas we Catholics don’t. But how does the Catholic Church actually interpret the Bible?

T

HE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT NO ONE interprets the Scriptures “literally”; our task is to make sense of it, and that means listening out for the voice of God who is always breathing the message for our day into our attentive ears.

Therefore Catholics and Evangelicals — and all Scripture scholars — are doing exactly the same thing: finding out what is the word of God for our time.

There may be disagreements about what particular texts mean; in general, however, disagreements are increasingly not on denominational lines, but are linked to the place where the Bible-reader finds herself or himself.

(Fr Nicholas King SJ)

Photos: Catholic News Service

• May: Lourdes, Rome, Assisi, Loreto, Medjugorje, Croatia Led by Fr Keith Gordon-Davis • June: Medjugorje, Rome, Assisi, Loreto, Split & Dubrovnik Led by Archbishop Stephen Brislin • September: Camino Santiago De Compostela (Camino Primitivo Route) Led by Fr Chris Townsend • September: Holy Land & Turkey Led by Archbishop William Slattery OFM • October: Sacred Heart Pilgrimage to Lourdes, Paris & Paray-Le-Monial Led by Fr Lawrence Mduduzi Ndlovu

How do we interpret the Bible?

What’s a THIRD ORDER? For lay people who don’t want to join the priesthood or religious life, there is the option of joining a ‘Third Order’. FATHER S’MILO MNGADI explains.

N

OT EVERYBODY WHO hears God’s call to sacrifice the ways of the world is also called to the priesthood or consecrated religious life.

Such people may join what is called “third orders”. Tertiaries, as they are known, live out the spirituality of religious congregations while still going about their secular daily lives.

Here we need to go back to the early Church. When the formal persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ceased after 313 AD, a number of people felt the need to experience the “suffering for Christ” in new ways. Hermit movements increased and were later formalised into monasteries which emphasised detachment from the world, mainly through austere living in communities of obedience while observing complete sexual abstinence.

Monks and nuns who had “left the world” became the locus of wisdom and spiritual guidance for people who “remained in the world”.

Even kings and rulers sought their counsel. Now many people wanted to share their spirituality as their secular lives permitted.

To meet this need, the Benedictines, for example, started the “Oblates”. These partook of certain practices of monks and modelled their spirituality in their daily living.

This was ritualised through a public commitment and investiture with

Members of the Neocatechumenal

things like a smaller scapu- Way live out their charism by being lay missionaries. Here they perlar worn underneath peoform a Nativity Play in Belhar, Cape ple’s normal clothing.

Town. Insert: Fr André Blais OMI The rise of mendicant (1902-92), founder of the Institute orders — those that travelled of Christ the King in Umzimkulu. to evangelise rather than be encloistered — at the beginning of the second millennium saw the founding of the Third Orders or who were members of those congretertiaries for people “in the world”. gations, relatives of members, beneThis is true of orders like the Francis- ficiaries of their ministry cans, Dominicans and Servites. Ulti- (particularly, schools) and so on. mately, even these were made to All these secular orders/groups return the cloister model by the order are recognised by Canon Law (303). of the Church hierarchy, contrary to They are not joined only by the laity their founding charisms of being but also by diocesan priests, also “wandering monks”. known as “secular priests”.

Tertiaries and associates In spite of this, people who could not enter the cloister continued in the “world”. Some of these would later develop into non-cloister religious congregations generally known as “third order regular”. Others, however, remain, to this day, purely “secular” and are called “secular third orders” or “secular” Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans and so on.

More recently, a sizeable number of religious congregations have started movements for lay members called “associates”. The Holy Family Association was one of the first to follow this route.

The associates, like tertiaries, share the same spirituality with their “mother” congregations and support their work. They are mainly people

Even popes were members of the third orders. For example, Pope John XXIII belonged to the Third Order of St Francis, now known as the Order of Secular Franciscans. However, their clerical status is not formally recognised in these groups. All are equal.

ORDER NOW – THE PERFECT XMAS GIFT

Rise of new movements There is also a newer reality of ecclesial movements which incorporate priests and laypeople on a semi-equal basis. They share the same spirituality; each one according to their state of life. Examples include Focolare, the Neocatechumenal Way, Opus Dei, the Community of Sant’Egidio, and various secular institutes.

An example of the latter is the Institute of Christ the Priest, founded

by Fr André Blais OMI in Umzimkulu, KwaZulu-Natal, which has lay members called “auxiliaries”.

All these movements, generally beyond the jurisdiction of a diocesan bishop, share a common charism and contribute not only to their mother congregations/bodies but also to the wider communion of the Church and her apostolate to the world. n Fr Mngadi is a priest of the diocese of Mariannhill. He is looking at different types of sodalities over several editions of The Southern Cross.

The Southern Cross

7

Pope Francis’

Letter of Love

Photo: IPA/Sipa USA/Reuters/CNS

IN FOCUS THIS MONTH

GüNTHER SIMMERMAcHER takes a look at Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, which was released in October.

P

OPE FRANCIS’ THIRD AND latest encyclical, titled Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship, calls all men and women to solidarity and unity in acts of societal love. The pope signed the document in October at the tomb of St Francis in the lower basilica dedicated to the saint in Assisi, central Italy. Here is our primer to what doubtless will be regarded as a landmark document in the Catholic Church and beyond.

What exactly is an encyclical?

An encyclical is a papal letter — the term is derived from the Latin word for “circular” — which sets out the Church’s teachings on a theme. Of all papal documents, encyclicals are second in importance only to apostolic constitutions (or papal bull).

Of recent popes, Benedict XVI issued three encyclicals, John Paul II wrote 14, Paul VI seven, John XXIII eight, and Pius XII an industrious 41.

Pope Francis’ previous encyclicals were Lumen Fidei (2013, said to have been completed from Pope Benedict’s draft) and Laudato Si’ (2015).

Fratelli Tutti has eight chapters over 78 pages, so it is quite digestible.

So, the new encyclical: Why that title?

8

As with his previous encyclical, Laudato Si’, Pope Francis quotes an Italian phrase by the saint whose name he took and who shapes this pontificate: the 13th-century St Francis of Assisi.

The title has caused controversy for being gender-specific: Fratelli means “brothers”, and the saint used it because he was addressing men only. While it is legitimate to translate the title as “Brothers and Sisters All”, many commentators felt that it makes no sense to appeal for universal solidarity between all people with a title that, grammatically, excludes women. These critics praise the content of the document, but The Southern Cross

they suggest that Pope Francis could have given the content visible life by changing or adapting the title in response to the lament of the many women who felt excluded by it.

Exacerbating matters is that Fratelli Tutti lacks a comprehensive treatment of women and the role of patriarchy in discrimination and violence against them, showing once again that this issue is Pope Francis’ blindspot.

But the spirit of the title illustrates the thrust of the document: that we are all interconnected, and therefore have a duty to take care of one another.

OK, and how do we do that?

Well, Pope Francis knows that he is asking for what might be the impossible. So he doesn’t provide concrete solutions. Rather, he tries to get us — Catholics and the whole world — to reflect on the sorry state of humanity, and he hopes that these reflections, animated by his analysis, will prompt us to work for change.

Pope Francis leaves it open how we are to do so. Think of Fratelli Tutti as the pope’s diagnosis of humanity’s malaise and the framework for solutions, but the specific treatment plan is for us to develop. The pope gives us a sharp, unsparing analysis of the state of the world, rendered through the lens of the teachings of the Catholic Church.

It calls society to action, but also speaks to our individual conscience. Where we are hostile or indifferent towards others, Pope Francis urges us to be like the Good Samaritan. Fratelli Tutti is the encyclical of empathy, coming at a time when that quality is increasingly marginalised and seen as “unrealistic”, and when those who work for social justice — a key term in

A man reads the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano with the frontpage about Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti in St Peter’s Square at the Vatican.

Catholic teaching — are much maligned.

“In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia,” Pope Francis writes. “What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalised indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realise that we are all in the same boat.”

Right, and what does Pope Francis actually say?

In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis reviews the state of the world, and finds it in a mess, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout. “Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarisation have become political tools,” the pope writes. “Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways, one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion.”

But in the darkness he also wants us to have hope — and that is always a dangerous word to those who control the light switches, for hope means not accepting things as they are.

Hope, the pope writes, “can open us up to grand ideals that make life more beautiful and worthwhile”.

Pope Francis is calling us out of our mind-ghettos of individualism, ideol-

ogy, religion, race, ethnicity, class, history, nationalism and so on. He wants us to bring down the barriers that divide, and collectively work together in friendship to counter the divide-andrule mechanics of power, and instead order society towards the greater good.

This requires encounter, dialogue, empathy and unity in action. And that begins in the way we relate to those in our proximity. Returning to a favourite theme, Pope Francis bemoans the decline of common courtesy: a word of thanks, or a simple “excuse me�. But small acts of kindness, he argues, can set in motion changes of heart. Every now and then, he writes, “miraculously, a kind person appears and is willing to set everything else aside in order to show interest, to give the gift of a smile, to speak a word of encouragement, to listen amid general indifference. If we make a daily effort to do exactly this, we can create a healthy social atmosphere in which misunderstandings can be overcome and conflict forestalled.�

Fratelli Tutti will make uncomfortable reading for those who subscribe to populist platforms. The pope calls for open movement for migrants who have no better options than to leave their homes, and their welcome and protection by society. Migrants and refugees “possess the same intrinsic dignity as any person�, he notes. They can enrich societies, rather than threaten them.

Those are difficult words for many Catholics in South Africa, or Europe or the United States.

Pope Francis also identifies vulnerable people whose plight doesn’t make headlines in a “throwaway culture�, such as the unborn and the elderly.

Any lessons for South Africa in Fratelli Tutti?

Our politicians should read the encyclical. “Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-

term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others,� Pope Francis says. “In this craven exchange of charges and countercharges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.�

So the pope is setting them an examination of conscience. Good politicians — and with that adjective, the pool has suddenly shrunk — should interrogate themselves about how their work has unleashed positive forces, and what mark they have left on society.

Pope Francis quotes the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference when he looks at conflict, reconciliation and peace. In 1986, our bishops envisaged a new society “based on service to others, rather than the desire to dominate; a society based on sharing what one has with others, rather than the selfish scramble by each for as much wealth as possible; a society in which the value of being together as human beings is ultimately more important than any lesser group, whether it be family, nation, race or culture�.

Pope Francis, who in his conclusion acknowledges the influence of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, emphasises the importance of forgiveness — which is not the same thing as forgetting. In South Africa, we need to take time to reflect on what Pope Francis has to say on healing and reconciliation.

In other parts of the encyclical, Pope Francis reiterates the absolute inadmissibility of the death penalty in Catholic teaching. He also devotes a chapter to encouraging greater interreligious dialogue, pointing in particular to the significant progress made in that area with Muslim leaders, especially the joint declaration on human fraternity signed with Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar in Cairo, in February 2019.

That all sounds like socialism‌

It is all rooted in the teachings of the Church. Pope Francis is saying nothing which Popes Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Paul VI, John XXIII or Pius XII didn’t say in one way or another before him. Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI, for example, certainly were no friend of socialism, but their critique of capitalist society was as radical as that offered by Francis.

Should a Catholic find anything of essence stated in Fratelli Tutti with which they disagree, then they likely are in disagreement with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

And that will include many Catholics, for whom Pope Francis has strong words: “Paradoxically, those who claim to be unbelievers can sometimes put God’s will into practice better than believers.â€? • Read the full text of Fratelli Tutti at https://bit.ly/3d03Eoy

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The Southern Cross

9

100 YEARS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS

C

Centenary Congratulations

ongratulations to The Southern Cross as it completes 100 years of existence. We thank The Southern Cross as an institution, and particularly the people who, over generations in these 100 years served as a means of communication about activities of the Church in Southern Africa. We appreciate the link that The Southern Cross has been for us, and continues to be, with the whole wide Church, in terms of news and other developments. It was, for example, a great source of information during the Vatican II council and captured all the exciting developments for us.

The Southern Cross, which I have discovered, is read by other ecclesial communities as well, has not only been a source of information about faith, but also a platform of discussion and application of that faith in our lives and in our world. It has played an important role in expressing the unity of the Church by sharing information about Church activities around the country and thus making Catholics feel as one.

Radio Veritas congratulates and thanks The Southern Cross for 100 years of magnificent service to the Catholic Church and its people in South Africa.

We wish you God’s blessings on the new magazine.

10

The Southern Cross

T

he Leadership Conference of Consecrated Life of Southern Africa would like to convey our heartfelt congratulations to The Southern Cross as you celebrate your centenary.

Please be sure of our continuous prayers and ongoing support for your bright future!

Sr Thao Phi FMM, Secretary General: LCCL (SA)

I particularly thank The Southern Cross for covering the activities, statements and works of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference. It has given a voice to bishops, and generated interest among the faithful about the existence of the bishops’ conference, the work that it does, its teachings and statements.

The debates that have sometimes ensued have only helped to clarify the best way a Catholic paper should present and debate issues, and as it completes 100 years, we can all be happy to have made a contribution in growing the paper.

The Southern Cross met its challenges of circulation, which affect all the print media houses, just as it was beginning to think afresh on how the aspect of being inclusive in its coverage of news and activities could be improved. It is sad that as The Southern Cross completes its centenary, it is ceasing to exist in the format of a weekly newspaper that has characterised it for so long. As the saying goes, however, “Everything happens for a reason”. It is hoped that with the new format that The Southern Cross is now taking, this objective of inclusive coverage of the whole country and all ages will be even better achieved.

Congratulations to The Southern Cross, particularly to the present freelance staff and board members who are overseeing its centenary celebrations and making sure that as it metamorphosises and adapts to new circumstances, it continues its mission of uniting the Church, sharing the faith and applying it to our lives and world situation for the next 100 years. Ad Multos Annos!

Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha, President: Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference

The Franciscan Missionaries of Mary of South Africa

give God thanks for The SouThern CroSS team being such a continual channel for imparting the catholic Spirit to the people of South Africa over the past one hundred years.

Please accept our sincere congratulations and prayerful support!

Goodbye to the weekly paper and hello to the monthly mag

for uncomfortable Church issues to be aired.

Within my weekly column over For many years, LUKY WHITTLE was a Southern cross many years after that debut in 1966, columnist. Here she says farewell to the weekly The Southern Cross provided me with a platform to express my pro-life connewspaper and welcomes the monthly magazine. cerns, with the issues of abortion and euthanasia in the forefront.

I was over the moon to learn that What has The Southern Cross some staff members have declined the HE YEAR 2020 BROUGHT US brought to me personally? The hallmark invitation to disappear without trace. of the newspaper has above all been the the promise that it would With the relaunch of a new Southern mark the culmination of The encouragement Cross, the publicaSouthern Cross’ centenary and of readers to detion is looking to herald the start of our own Catholic velop unstinting rely on the goodlove for God and newspaper’s second century. will and the loyalty Kingdom.

Instead, the dignified dowager has his of customer and of been abandoned to retire from the Promotion advertiser, built up fray. I cringed with pain as staff mem- pilgrimages and throughout a huna favourable bers were retrenched after years of dred hardworking loyal service, and the newspaper, Marian policy years. We have lost unwhich has been the voice of Catholics enabled so many institucounted readers for a hundred years, was dismantled tions that are dear to visit the Holy without ceremony. Even the dignity of to us. Surely The Fatima a centenary celebration was denied the Land, Lourdes, Luky Whittle with husband Sean and their Southern Cross can newly-unemployed: a poignant memo- and last another little among other six children in 1977. rial indeed. century or so. holy places.

Every time I had contemplated the Thank you, Southern Cross, for The Southern Cross upheld consisanniversary in October, I had wondered if I would live long enough to be tent policy with regard to social justice your courage to relaunch. Thank you, invited to write a word of appreciation during the apartheid years. The publi- too, for all the plates of Irish stew in honour of the centennial. My first cation further ensured the fine balance which payment for my articles put on article for the newspaper was printed between sustained loyalty to the Barque my family table. Have a lovely, lovely of Peter and the provision of a forum 100th birthday. Ad multos annos!

54 years ago, in December 1966.

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The Southern Cross

11

On October 16, 1920, The Southern Cross published its very first issue.

Here we look back at the proud 100 years of South Africa’s national Catholic newspaper — which last month became a magazine.

The first hundred years of The Southern Cross

T

HE STORY OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS BEGINS AT A breakfast that followed a St Patrick’s Day Mass for the Association of Old Hibernians in St Michael’s church in Rondebosch, Cape Town, on March 17, 1917.

Present at that breakfast was Fr Leo Sormany OMI, an influential priest visiting from Durban. Talking with his host, Fr James Kelly, he noted the need for a popular Catholic weekly newspaper. Fr Kelly had no background in journalism, but he was greatly excited by the idea. The two priests and a few other clerics proceeded to animate the idea among the laity and bishops.

South Africa’s widely dispersed bishops, not yet organised into a conference, had the rare opportunity to meet in July 1919, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the priestly ordination of Natal’s Bishop Henri Delalle OMI in Durban. A meeting of the bishops at Cathedral House in Durban, chaired by Bishop Hugh MacSherry of the Eastern Cape vicariate, resolved that the national Catholic weekly should be founded by the bishops, and be published by a limited company, with a professional journalist to be appointed to assist the priest editor.

That editor would be Fr Kelly and so it happened that the newspaper would be based in Cape Town, initially at Fr Kelly’s Rondebosch presbytery. He was to be assisted by Mr A Donovan, a newspaper editor who had been present at that

12

The Southern Cross

St Patrick’s Day breakfast in 1917.

Fr Kelly also arrived at the name for the new paper. He liked the cleverly punned name of an Anglican publication he had received once in 1892: The Southern Cross. Until it was ascertained that the Anglican Southern Cross was indeed defunct and the title free for use, the Catholic newspaper was going to bear the unhappily strident moniker The Crusader.

After months of promotion — especially by Durban’s Fr James O’Donnell OMI, who tirelessly toured the country to create enthusiasm for the new Southern Cross — the newspaper hit the churches on Sunday, October 17, 1920 (a day after the cover date), with a circulation of 3 500 and a cover price of 3 pence. The excitement was great. Outside Durban’s Emmanuel cathedral, the young men who had volunteered for the work of distributing the copies of the new Catholic weekly had a difficult task, so eager was the rush to secure the long-wished for issue. The cathedral’s allocation of 800 copies was quickly sold out.

South Africa in 1920 was still relatively hostile territory for Catholics. So in an editorial, Fr Kelly exhorted Catholics not to be afraid or ashamed of being seen reading their newspaper in public. “South African Protestants will respect you South African Catholics all the more for being proud of your faith and showing your pride in it,” he wrote.

Within a few weeks, circulation had risen to 6 000, with

the enthusiastic help of the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Children of Mary. With that, The Southern Cross had quickly become one of South Africa’s biggest weeklies. Indeed, it was so popular that the board of directors tried to reduce circulation and advertising to keep production costs down. The first annual general meeting, held on January 22, 1921, found the company in a precarious state of financial affairs, even as hearty congratulations had been received from all over the Union.

The paper’s first year was marked by editorial acrimony, especially between Donovan and Fr Kelly. Forced to choose between the journalist and the priest, the board decided that Donovan’s role was essential, and Fr Kelly was asked to resign. Donovan, however, also had Amid great excitement, Catholics at Durban’s Emmanuel cathedral buy disputes with interim editor Fr John Colgan. The priest the first issue of The Southern Cross on October 17, 1920. offered to resign; in the event, Donovan resigned in January 1922. Within a year, Fr Colgan left — he would return Denis Hurley, “Robin” would become the local Church’s giant as editor in 1931 — and was replaced by the workaholic Mgr of the second half of the 20th century. Travelling the country to meet his “Cornerites”, Mgr Kolbe met the four Hurley chilJohn Morris. dren at Umzumbe. He was so impressed by Denis, Eileen, Jerry and Chris that he wrote a poem about them, published in The Breaking the law The newspaper faced a bizarre problem in 1923: It was Southern Cross.

Other popular columns would be launched over the advised by an advocate that selling The Southern Cross at Mass years.

Mary Singleton’s “Home Circle” was wildly popular in on Sunday was illegal under the Sabbath Observance Act. the 1930s and ’40s, while from the 1950s on, the various Having secured an indication that the company would not columns by Mgr Desmond Hatton became a fixture. In the face any legal action, it cheerfully continued to break the Sunday law. That way, readers were able to enjoy the content 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Luky Whittle and The Scrivener enjoyed which the chairman of the board at the 1925 AGM praised a long run. The renowned Scripture scholar Fr Nicholas King fulsomely: “I do not think any Catholic journal in the world SJ wrote his series of reflections on the Sunday Mass readings has such a galaxy of famous writers and contributors writing exclusively for The Southern Cross every week for 28 years, for it practically every week.” until the very last weekly edition. Perhaps the most popular Among that galaxy was Mgr Frederick Kolbe, the intellec- column in the post-war era was written from 1983 until his tual giant of the local Church who had been present at the death in 2007 by the erudite Owen Williams, the Francophile bishops’ meeting that decided to launch a Catholic weekly. doyen of South African art critics.

Mgr Kolbe, a convert from the Rhenish Church, wrote many articles of consummate erudition, and a long travelogue of The Great Depression hits hard South Africa’s churches and missions. But the great intellecBy 1933, the Great Depression also affected The Southern tual evidently had much greater fun running the “Children’s Cross. In a gesture of concern for the staff, it was agreed in Corner”, a section dominated by affectionate chumminess November that year to reduce the cut in salaries from 10% to and in-jokes in which all correspondents were given nickonly 5%. The declining circulation was the largest in the names (see sidebar on page 14). newspaper’s 13-year history, even if other publications were Among these were the children of a lighthouse keeper in suffering much worse contractions. It would prove difficult Natal. Mgr Kolbe, the local Church’s giant of the first half of the 20th century, called one of them “Robin”. As Archbishop to recapture readers lost during the hard years of 1930-34, because they had dropped out of the habit of buying The South-

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Kids and The Southern Cross

100 YEARS OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS

For generations, many young Catholics in South Africa received some of their formation in The Southern Cross, starting with Uncle Joe’s “Children’s Corner” in the 1920s and ’30s, run by the great theologian and writer Mgr Frederick Kolbe.

To modern sensibilities the style and humour of the “Children’s Corner” may be arcane, but then it was wildly popular, with children from around the Union writing to Uncle Joe, who’d banter with them, allocated nicknames, and even met up with groups of them on his travels. Children, it seems, responded to the obvious affection Uncle Joe had for them. And at least one Corner gag is still good today: A girl, asked to explain what a monastery is, offered, “It’s a zoo for monsters.”

Uncle Joe retired in 1932 and was succeeded by “Granny Dimple”, who maintained her predecessor’s style. Cecilia Coker, as the postman knew “Granny Dimple”, died suddenly in December 1939. After her, petlover “Aunt Celia” from Estcourt entertained young readers for a decade. She was followed by “Aunt Valerie” (Fisher) of Durban, who was in charge from 1950 until her sudden death at 69 in 1964.

In 1951, Aunt Valerie visited Rome. At a papal audience, she held up a copy of The Southern Cross. Pope Pius XII saw that, stopped, beamed at her, and said: “Ah! South Africa! Fine! Fine!”

After Aunt Valerie’s death, children pages stopped for ten years, when two short-lived columns appeared. In 1977, teacher Ethné Stevens launched her “Children’s Club”, which ran until 1989. Then Shonagh Williams took over the baton for three years, and Nicky Strachan for two years. In 1999 Dorothy Paarman took over the children’s page, but after a few years the shortage of responses to competitions — always a good guide to interest — suggested that, after more than 80 years, Catholic children had no more need for a kids’ page.

Mgr Frederick Kolbe, with readers of the “Children’s Corner” on his 80th birthday in 1934. At left in the hat is his successor, “Granny Dimple”.

14

Right: Ethné Stevens, children’s columnist from 1977-89.

The Southern Cross

ern Cross, as chairman GW Peart noted in 1935.

Economic conditions notwithstanding, in 1933 the company started to sell books, with a volume of Mgr Kolbe’s poetry among the bestsellers. Out of that endeavour grew the Catholic Bookshop, which the Catholic Newspaper & Publishing Company owned until it was sold to the Schoenstatt Institute in 1982.

Those were the days when a trip overseas was still a big event. So when Mgr John Colgan, who had succeeded Mgr Morris as editor in 1931, attended the 1936 International Congress of Catholic Journalists in Rome, he applied for six months leave. Fr Bryan Gavan-Duffy SJ stood in for him, though the newspaper’s content was mostly run by the managing editor, Mr M J Rowntree.

The Southern Cross was not the only English-language Catholic newspaper in South Africa at the time (see page 25).

The Catholic Times was published in Johannesburg, edited by Fr JP Whelan OMI. That newspaper was at the centre of some rancour when a disaffected advertising agent started to sell adverts for the Catholic Times by creating an impression that it had replaced The Southern Cross. A stern exchange of letters resolved that problem.

When chairman Peart travelled to Johannesburg in 1937, he was told that leading Catholics there felt that The Southern Cross was hostile to their region, and in particular to the Catholic Times. The upshot was that the company should acquire the Catholic Times to turn it into a national newspaper. The chairman of the Johannesburg paper, AW Clare, visited Cape Town to discuss the matter, but the company never heard from him on the subject again. So the idea died, as eventually would the Catholic Times — but not before the scheme was revisited in 1958, when Archbishop Owen McCann of Cape Town asked The Southern Cross to take over its publication. This time, the board rejected the idea because of financial implications.

Before becoming a bishop (and later a cardinal), Fr McCann had been The Southern Cross’ editor, from 1941-48. He would return for a second stint from 1986-91. The Southern Cross is therefore the only newspaper ever to have been edited by a future and an existing cardinal.

Production in wartime

The Second World War had been raging for two years when Fr McCann succeeded Mgr Colgan. When the war broke out, the newspaper anticipated a 30% decline in advertising, with Lever Brothers and Woolworths among the first to suspend their contracts. There was enough reserve of paper to continue production for a few months, but an extra stockpile of 10 tonnes was ordered immediately from Sweden. In the end, The Southern Cross had to cut pages and occasionally change its format to adapt to paper availability — but throughout the six years of war, it appeared every week — as it would throughout its life as a newspaper, from the first weekly issue in October 1920 to the last in September 2020.

The war affected circulation. In 1941, Peart attributed the first decline in circulation since 1936 to “so many of our Catholic young men having answered their country’s call to arms”. One of these Catholic men was board member JB “Jack” Robertson, a former cricket Springbok and future chairman. Peart, a lieutenant and father of three priests, also was periodically absent on military duty and resigned as chairman in September 1942, having been associated with The Southern Cross since its beginning. He died suddenly in 1946, shortly after returning from Sunday

Two series of cartoons delighted readers over generations. “Brother Juniper” by Fr Mac, syndicated from the US and seen here from the issue of February 16, 1958, ran for several decades. “Conrad” — veteran TV journalist Conrad Burke — first filed his cartoons in 1991, and they remained in the newspaper until the final edition.

Mass. The same year, Robertson became chairman, and future chairman Jean Pothier joined the board. Sons of both men would later sit on the board as well.

A bizarre furore erupted in December 1943 when the Protestant Association of South Africa threatened to apply to the government to ban The Southern Cross if the government did not repeal its ban on the association’s book The Roman Catholic System, a bigoted tract originally published by one William Hammond in 1890. The Southern Cross described the republished book as a “filthy attack on our nuns”, specifically the Sisters of Nazareth. The Southern Cross never was banned in South Africa, though some issues were banned in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia in the 1970s.

Soon after Fr Louis Stubbs became editor in 1948 — a position he would hold until 1972 — managing editor Rowntree left. He had not been on good terms with several

directors, who took the opportunity of Rowntree’s departure to raise the notion of employing a layman as editor, with a priest appointed to vet the newspaper every week. The proposal was not carried, but the next managing editor was given greater scope than his predecessor.

Managing editor Andrew Murray, appointed in 1950, and editor Fr Stubbs, appointed just two years earlier, steered The Southern Cross through a golden age that would see dramatic changes in the Church before Murray’s departure in 1969, to become a painter of worldwide renown (he died at 81 in 1997).

That era saw the establishment of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the successful fundraising campaign to save Catholic schools from apartheid’s Bantu Education in which The Southern Cross was a spearhead (the campaign featured on the front-page for many successive weeks), and the Second Vatican Council.

Working conditions were not ideal. Because Fr Stubbs was working only parttime, Murray often had to put together the entire newspaper on his own, as had his predecessor. In the mid-1950s, he finally received an assistant — of all people, his predecessor Rowntree, who would remain with the newspaper until 1965, accumulating almost four decades of service. His record would be broken by Murray’s eventual successor, Gene Donnelly, who worked for 41 years at The Southern Cross, until his retirement in 2010.

The 1950s was a time of healthy circulation, no doubt helped by such exciting events as the Marian Congress of 1950, and the establishment of the hierarchy the following year. To mark the latter, a series of daily editions was published under the banner The Southern Cross Daily.

It was the first instance of a South African religious publication bringing out a daily edition.

A Southern Cross wedding in 1938: Managing editor M Rowntree married Doris Hodgkiss at St Ignatius church in Claremont, Cape Town. Southern Cross editor Mgr John Colgan (behind the bridal couple) officiated in the presence of Bishop Francis Hennemann (front right) and parish priest Fr WJ Leeson (back). The bride was the daughter of the printer of the paper.

Inset: Long-serving managing editor Gene Donnelly in 1969. He went on to serve The Southern Cross for a total of 41 years.

Heady time for the Church

The Second Vatican Council in the 1960s energised the Church around the world. The Southern Cross had a particularly well-placed correspondent from the Council: Durban’s Archbishop Denis The Southern Cross

15

The time we helped save a life I

Br Maximilian Kolbe Jacobs OSB had previously responded to an appeal in The Southern Cross for a kidney for a nun, but she had died before a transplant was possible. Now Br Max underwent the necessary tests to establish him as a compatible donor. He was, and the 35-year-old’s kidney was successfully transplanted into Emile in July 2002.

t is not often that a newspaper has the opportunity to help save a life — but in 2002 this is what happened.

Editor Günther Simmermacher had heard in 2001 of the case of Cape Town teenager Emile Leaner who was in need of a kidney transplant — but due to Emile’s rare blood type, finding a donor was proving impossible.

Emile’s body would later reject Br Max’s donor kidney, but it kept him alive to finally receive a kidney that “stuck”.

Today Emile is married and has a normal life — thanks in large part to Br Max (now a priest for his order in Namibia), The Southern Cross, and the prayers of its readers.

Simmermacher assigned the story to staff reporter Michail Rassool whose article appealing for help was published in the issue of September 12, 2001.

Several readers made contact with the Leaner family, but none were possible donors — until a Benedictine Brother came forward.

Hurley, a leading voice in the council himself, who for obvious reasons, contributed incognito.

It was a heady time, and this was reflected in The Southern Cross. When Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae vitae, with its reiteration of the Church’s prohibition of artificial birth control, in 1968, the newspaper carried the reaction of the region’s leading bishops on the front-page. These can be paraphrased thus: Bishop Boyle: The pope is 100% right! Cardinal McCann: The pope has spoken, and we must now obey. Archbishop Hurley: I am distraught by the encyclical. Bishop van Velsen of Kroonstad: What else did you expect?

Between 1953 and 1963, circulation had increased by 57%. In 1956 it stood at 15 000, in 1964 at 18 500. It never got better than that.

It has always been a thorny issue what advertising is acceptable in a Catholic newspaper. Alcohol ads were common in the 1920s and ’30s before they declined in frequency.

Much later, in November 1989, the board was faced with a query from the bishops’ conference as to whether liquor ads would be accepted. The minutes reflect, with a touch of hu-

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The Southern Cross

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mour, that the newspaper would take some advertisements without making a big splash of this innovation. Greater consternation greeted an advertisement for handguns in 1963.

In the 1970s, ads for government bonds caused protests from Catholic anti-apartheid groups, as did in 1989 an election ad for a National Party candidate.

Politics was a running theme in the 1980s. While some readers demanded to know from editor Mgr Donald de Beer (brother of Progressive Federal Party MP Zach de Beer) why his newspaper lacked loyalty to “the nation” (read apartheid), others saw The Southern Cross as a representative of middle-class liberalism or even conservatism.

In 1980, a Boksburg parish cancelled its weekly order of 130 copies because The Southern Cross had failed to report on the detention and reportedly rough interrogation of three priests: Frs Michael Mkhize, Remigius Makobane and Patrick Mvemve (later the bishop of Klerksdorp).

In an editorial, Mgr de Beer wrote that the report was suppressed at the request of Archbishop Joseph Fitzgerald of Johannesburg, on the grounds that publicity could create further problems for the priests, who had been warned by the security police not to mention their detention to anybody (an instruction they had rightly ignored). Embarrassingly for The Southern Cross, the secular press did cover the story. Whether or not public perceptions of The Southern Cross were fair, it would be a long time before the newspaper regained the trust of many Justice & Peace activists.

The board of directors had seen a gradual passing of the torch. On June 15, 1979, chairman Jean Pothier died suddenly. He had served on the board for nearly 33 years, and 24 of these as director. He was followed by William Houghton, who steered The Southern Cross through the tur-

100 YEARS OF EDITORS Fr James Kelly (1920-21) † 1933

Mgr John Colgan Mgr John Morris (1921-22; 31–41) (1923–31) † 1949 † 1954

Fr Owen McCann (1941–48) † 1994

Fr Louis Stubbs (1948–72) † 1981

bulent ’80s before his death in 1990, also while still in office.

John Robertson, son of former chairman Jack, then became chairman for the next 17 years. The same year, Mr Pothier’s son Bernard joined the board. The second incarnation of a Robertson/Pothier tandem helped shape The Southern Cross significantly. Both retired soon after one another in 2006/07.

A third generation of Pothiers joined the board in the person of Bernard’s daughter Rosanne Shields, who in 2014 succeeded Chris Moerdyk to become the first female chair of the board, a position she continuers to hold today.

On the technological edge

Much changed over the years in the way the board runs The Southern Cross’ affairs. In 1952, the company still debated the acquisition of a hatstand (the board, the reader will be relieved to learn, authorised the procurement). In the late 1980s, it faced much bigger decisions. In 1987, the board of directors approved the purchase of a “telecommunication computer” for processing international wire stories via the Saponet service — a forerunner of e-mail. A year later, managing editor Gene Donnelly mooted the notion of switching to a new-fangled “Desk Top Publishing system”.

Over the next few years, money was invested in the

Mgr Donald de Beer (1972–86) † 2000

Cardinal Owen McCann (1986-91) † 1994

Fr Bernard Connor OP (1991–95) † 1999

Michael Shackleton (1995-2001)

Günther Simmermacher (2001- )

study of programmes and purchase of “hard-drive equipment”, suitable disks and — it’s a brave new world — a mouse. In 1991, Donnelly moved to implement the Apple Macintosh system. The same year, veteran journalist Sydney Duval, in a report for the bishops’ conference, backed that idea, and proceeded to initiate financing from the German funding agency Missio Aachen.

The same report also urged a reorganisation of staffing structures. Subsequently, Dominican Father Bernard Connor was appointed editor, succeeding Cardinal McCann, whose supposed caretaker stint had lasted from 1986-91. Noel Bruyns, a journalist and former youth columnist for The Southern Cross, became business manager.

Fr Connor’s appointment was preceded by renewed discussion about the employment of a lay editor (there were voices proposing Mr Bruyns, who had previously worked for the social communications department of the bishops’ conference), and the debate resumed when Fr Connor announced his resignation in late 1994. Some directors felt that it was important that a priest be the editor, with journalistic background secondary. Others felt that the editor could be a journalist layperson with “a Church feel”. In the end, the appointment of Michael Shackleton in 1995 satisfied both

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Hundreds of readers have gone on pilgrimage with The Southern Cross, such as the group on the left at the Colosseum in Rome in 1925, the above in Jerusalem in 2006, or on the right in Aix-en-Provence in France in 2019. Three exciting pilgrimages are planned for 2021.

points of view: he had been a priest but had also performed ad hoc work for The Southern Cross.

Under Shackleton’s editorship, the newspaper introduced new regular columns, a new masthead and a more structured look. In 1998 Günther Simmermacher, who had joined the staff three years earlier, replaced the long-serving Gene Donnelly as managing editor, and in February 2001 became the editor, the first professional journalist in that position.

Launch of pilgrimages

The Southern Cross had headlined pilgrimages to Lourdes and Rome in the 1920s. In the Jubilee Year 2000, it organised the first of more than 25 pilgrimages. In the 20 years since, The Southern Cross has taken readers to the Holy Land, Jordan, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and even Mauritius, and to the canonisation ceremonies in Rome of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II in 2014 and Mother Teresa in 2016.

At a time when The Southern Cross’ finances were in a precarious position, the newspaper launched the Associ-

Bishops from The Southern Cross The Southern Cross has provided two bishops for the Church.

Fr Owen McCann (pictured) edited the newspaper from 1941-48 before he was appointed archbishop of Cape Town in 1951. As a cardinal, he’d edit The Southern Cross for a second stint from 1986-91 following his retirement as archbishop.

Another former Southern Cross staffer, Hugh Boyle, became the bishop of Port Elizabeth (and in 1954 of Johannesburg). He had worked for the newspaper in the late 1920s.

On a smaller scale, in 1947 The Southern Cross employed 18-year-old bookkeeper William D’Arcy, who would becoming a well-known Cape Town priest. And in 1960, Southern Cross shorthand typist Celeste Santos left the company’s employ to become a Dominican nun.

And a future priest grew up in the newsroom of The Southern Cross as the son of long-serving managing editor Gene Donnelly. Today Fr Simon Donnelly, a doctor of linguistics, is working as a translator for the Vatican, and is often seen at audiences with Pope Francis.

18

The Southern Cross

ates Campaign in 2002 as a way for readers to support their newspaper. The rolling campaign has kept The Southern Cross alive, and at the same time funded outreach programmes, including to prisoners –— one of whom credited the newspaper with his conversion to Catholicism. In October, it was revised to give contributors more options to support the social communications apostolate.

The Southern Cross was relatively slow to establish a presence on the Internet — the first website was launched only in 2003 — but since then the newspaper has caught up with new technologies, including a digital edition, which launched in 2010 and initially had more subscribers than some mainstream newspapers.

In the first decade of the new millennium, most newspapers worldwide recorded drastic decreases in circulation. For a while The Southern Cross held its circulation steady, a feat regarded as so remarkable that the newspaper was named one of South Africa’s top performing newspapers in 2009 and 2010 by Marketing Mix magazine. But with the rise of digital access to information and the concurrent global decline of newspaper circulations, The Southern Cross also saw a gradual decrease in sold editions. By 2019, the editor and board started to discuss the idea of turning The Southern Cross into a monthly magazine, with the feasibility of such a transformation being part of the publication’s centenary planning in 2020.

The coronavirus lockdown put an end to all plans.

With churches closed, The Southern Cross lost virtually all its points-of-sale. The newspaper carried on publishing every week digitally, making it freely available four days after subscribers received their issue. The generous support of the Catholic public kept the newspaper going, but by June it was clear that tough decisions would need to made. All staff were retrenched at the end of July, with three former staff members — editor Simmermacher, digital editor Claire Allen and business manager Pamela Davids (who had been on the staff since 1973) — retained on a freelance basis to produce a magazine.

As the final edition of the weekly newspaper was published on September 23, 2020, the first edition of the monthly magazine was released in print.

May there be many more anniversaries so that further good news can be added to this illustrious history.

• Subscribe to The Southern Cross now and get one full digital edition from each decade of publication as our special centenary gift to you. Go to www.digital. scross.co.za/subscribe

Saint of the Month: St MARTIN DE PORRES

The saint who beat racism

As a saint who suffered much racial discrimination, the life of St Martin de Porres has much application in South Africa, as FR EMIL BLASER OP explains.

I

Pilgrimage 2021

Southern Cross

NSPIRATION. ENCOURAGEMENT. This is what ordinary people are searching for as they struggle for happiness in their everyday lives.

No doubt, it is this that distinguishes Pope Francis from most other leaders in the world today. Our present crop of political leaders leave much to be desired as they espouse anything but the values of Christ. Most of us look to Christ for inspiration, and many find it easier to be inspired by ordinary people like ourselves who have incarnated the values of Christ, or by what we commonly call the Gospel values.

Many nations have shining examples of sanctity. South Africa has entered this league with Bl Benedict Daswa, who was martyred in 1990 and beatified in 2015. The Church is blessed with a galaxy of saints who stood out in some way, incarnating the values of the Gospel. With our history of apartheid, one saint stands out as a shining example and inspiration: the Dominican St Martin de Porres, the black saint from Peru who overcame racism and worked tirelessly for the poor.

Even though born as long ago as 1579, St Martin continues to be an inspiration to people across the world who have a strong devotion to him and who continue to request his intercession.

Martin was born of an African slave woman and a Spaniard, loyal to the

Spanish throne. His father disowned him and his name is not even mentioned in the baptismal register. He abandoned the family altogether after the birth of Martin’s sister, Juana.

Target of racism

St Martin at a glance

Born: December 9, 1579, in Lima, Peru Died: November 3, 1639 (aged 59) in Lima, Peru Beatified: 1837 Canonised: 1962 Feast: November 3 Attributes: Animals eating from the same dish; broom, crucifix, rosary, a heart Patronages: Black and mixed-race people, race relations, public health, social justice, poor people, barbers and hair stylists, innkeepers, education

Because Martin was of mixed race, he was initially not allowed to be clothed in the habit of the Dominican order, which was the practice of the time. Thanks be to God, during his lifetime he was admitted to full membership of the order and clothed accordingly. St Martin experienced racial discrimination first hand. But this did not deter him from struggling for his human rights and seeking sanctity.

Throughout his life he applied his expertise and skills to whoever needed his services.

Despite being at the receiving end of racial discrimination, he manifested love and care to all who approached him. At one moment a sick bishop would request his attention while the next moment Martin would be sweeping the floor and cleaning the toilets.

At one point, during an epidemic in Lima, many of the friars became very ill and went into quarantine. In defiance of regulations, Martin still went to care for them (reportedly passing through locked doors). At another time he brought a

man who had been stabbed to his own room, to care for him until the man could be taken to the hospice run by Martin’s sister. The prior reprimanded Martin sternly for his disobedient breach of the rules. But Martin’s response softened the prior’s heart: “Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know that the precept of obedience took precedence over that of charity.” After that, Martin was free to exercise his mercy.

Martin, a vegetarian, gave freely to the poor, materially and in care. If needed, he begged for donations to support these works. He scrubbed the kitchen and did the laundry while also giving medical care to the people. And he had extraordinary gifts: reported levitations, bilocation, passing through locked doors, instantaneous cures and a remarkable rapport with animals (he is often pictured with dogs, cats and/or mice, sometimes all eating from the same bowl).

Continued on page 22

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19

St Martin de Porres Southern Cross

The

‘Everything, even sweeping, scraping vegetables, weeding a garden and waiting on the sick could be a prayer, if it were offered to God.’

A Timeline of St Martin de PorRes

1579

Born on December 9 in Lima, Peru, to Juan de Porres, a Spanish conquistador of noble birth, and Anna Velasquez, an emancipated black slave from Panama. The father, who refused to acknowledge his paternity, abandoned Anna, Martin and baby sister Juana in 1581.

1591

Became an apprentice to a surgeon/barber and started giving medical treatment to people, especially the poor.

1594

Applied to join the Dominican order. First he was given servant jobs, then promoted to almoner.

He still cured people as a surgeon/ barber, with miraculous cures being attributed to him, as they would be to the end of his life.

1604

Professed religious vows as a Dominican lay brother (that is, not ordained to the priesthood).

1614-39

Put in charge of the Dominicans’ infirmary. He would remain in that service until his death. Martin also treated members of the public outside the infirmary, making no distinction between people of nobility or slaves.

He set up a feeding scheme that fed 160 hungry people a da, and founded an orphanage.

Among his friends were two other future Dominican saints: Rose of Lima and Juan Macías, a fellow Dominican lay brother.

1639

Martin died at 59 on November 3, to great public mourning, and was buried in the monastery cemetery.

Soon reports of miracles by his intercession were reported.

1664

Martin’s body was exhumed and found incorrupt, exuding a fine, sweet fragrance. It was later reinterred with those of his friends Rose and Juan Macías in the church of St Domingo (Dominic) in Lima.

1837

Pope Gregory XVI beatified Bl Martin de Porres on October 29.

1962

Pope John XXIII canonised St Martin de Porres in Rome on May 6.

He is the patron saint of, among others, people of mixed race, innkeepers, barbers, and public health workers. His feast day is on November 3, also commemorated by the church of England.

Church of St Domingo in Lima, Peru, with the remains of St Martin de Porres, St Rose of Lima and St Juan Macías.

Photo: Diego Delso/Common Licence

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Continued from page 19 Devotion to St Martin is popular throughout the world. All kinds of people, across the board, look to him for inspiration and encouragement. In South Africa attention to St Martin was crystallised in the 1950s when Fr Nicholas Humphreys OP pioneered devotion to him. Today this work continues and more and more people are calling upon St Martin to pray for us and to be our inspiration.

In South Africa, churches dedicated to St Martin de Porres are in: Orlando West and Craighall Park (Johannesburg archdiocese); Sunnyside (Pretoria); Lavistown (Cape Town); Pietermaritzburg/Woodlands; Himmelberg/Beulah (Mariannhill); Esikhaleni (Eshowe); Amsterdam (Dundee); Gamalakhe (Umzimkulu); Mngeni (Kokstad); Aliwal North; Buffalo Flats in East London and Gelvandale in Port Elizabeth; Lesseyton (Queenstown); Ceres/Wolseley (Oudtshoorn); Calvinia and Friersdale (Keimoes-Upington); Virginia/Meloding (Kroonstad); Phuthaditjhaba (Bethlehem); Orkney/Kanana and Springbokpan (Klerksdorp); Polokwane; White River (Witbank)

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This painting of St Martin de Porres was created during or soon after his lifetime.

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Four great ways to celebrate ADVENT On November 29 we enter the season of Advent — a time of preparation and reflection, anticipating the birth of Jesus, and his second coming in the future. cLAIRE ALLEN suggests four ways you can enter into this season personally.

I

N THE OLD TESTAMENT GOD SET up seasons of cycles for people to observe and celebrate every year — days of remembrance, seasons of atonement and days of feasting.

In the same way the Church observes a liturgical year — a pattern which keeps the story of Christ’s redemption close to the heart.

In these seasons we are invited to participate as a community in Christian life and the life of the Church.

God tells us that we will pass these truths on from generation to generation — so the liturgical seasons are an important way for families to pass on the knowledge and joy of Jesus’ love for us.

The season of Advent is observed for four weeks before the feast of the Nativity and begins the liturgical year of the Church.

Here’s how you can enter into the season of Advent, joining Catholics from all around the world, and generations of Catholics who have done so before us.

prayer, repentance and forgiveness and the other candle is pink, symbolising joy and lit on the Third Sunday of Advent.

A candle is lit each Sunday to mark the four weeks before the Nativity. You can make your own Advent wreath out of basic household/garden items, like coat-hangers, empty toilet paper rolls and plenty of greenery. Be sure to make space for four candles to sit securely in the wreath.

Say a prayer at home before lighting the candles in your wreath each Sunday.

Here’s a traditional prayer for the first candle: All-powerful God, increase our strength of will for doing good, that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming and call us to his side in the kingdom of heaven, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Advent Nativity scene

Advent wreath

The Advent wreath with its four candles is a tradition which began in the Middle Ages. The wreath and candles are full of symbolism tied to the Christmas season. The wreath itself, which is made of various evergreens, signifies continuous life. The circle of the wreath, which has no beginning or end, symbolises the eternity of God, the immortality of the soul, and the everlasting life we find in Christ.

In many countries, three of four candles are violet coloured, symbolising

You can set up your Nativity scene in stages over Advent. This is one activity where you can let your creativity reign. A Nativity scene can be made out of anything you like: playdough, pipe cleaners, clothespegs, Lego, paper figures, or plastic figures.

Each week you can focus on a different part. Set up the barn or cave, create and decorate your figures (don’t forget the shepherds, sheep, ox and donkey!), and the three wise men for the Epiphany in January.

Advent playlist

We don’t generally sing Christmas

hymns during Advent but rather more reflective, anticipatory hymns: Here’s a few you can add to your playlist: O Come, O Come Emmanuel; The King of Glory; Come, O Long Awaited Saviour; Ready the Way; On Jordan’s Bank.

Advent traditions

Try one of these Advent traditions from around the world: The Christingle, which is an orange tied with a red ribbon or tape and cocktail sticks with sweets or dried fruit and a candle in the centre (Germany).

A candle in the window to welcome Joseph and Mary (Ireland).

Advent calendar made from the branch of a fir tree with 24 boxes attached, with gifts inside (a more exciting version of the Advent calendar with chocolates inside) (Germany).

Advent Novena usually said in the nine days before Christmas (Italy).

House cleaning in preparation for the coming of Jesus (Poland).

Parols, which are colourful lanterns in the shape of a star placed around the home (Philippines).

As we consider Jesus throughout the course of the year and give our attention to his life, death, and Resurrection, you may find that Advent is the season you’ve been waiting for.

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Saints in a new focus Photographer Kristyn Brown has created portraits of saints using ordinary people as models. GüNTHER SIMMERMAcHER interviewed the artist.

O

NE DAY HER MOTHER talked about a third-century martyr and, like an old-fashioned photographer’s flash going off, Kristyn Brown had an idea.

Having spent most of her younger years “shooting terrible pictures and wasting a lot of film”, Kristyn had become a busy professional photographer — digital and no longer wasting film. By the time of that afternoon spent with her mother in Philadelphia, Kristyn had just discovered her passion for conceptual photography, an artform that uses the medium of pictures to illustrate an idea. She had the equipment and, as it turned out, the talent. All that was missing was inspiration.

“My mother was speaking to me about St Sebastian, and all I could see in my mind’s eye was a portrayal of him as a real person in a photograph,” Kristyn told The Southern Cross in an interview from Philadelphia. So in 2015, she set out to scout for a model to portray St Sebastian — and the first

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The Southern Cross

of what are now more than 80 portraits of “living saints” in what she calls “The Saints Project” was created.

Her mother, Claire Boyle, whose conversation started this lifechanging and “The Solemnity of Mary” is one of a series of photos in Kristyn Brown’s collection portraying faithbuilding projOur Lady in various stages of her life. ect, would later become a model herself, portraying tensive gallery of the Holy Family, amid her namesake St Clare of Assisi. “She all the saints (www.thesaints was really surprised by the final project.org) . These saints range from image,” Kristyn recalled. “Most people are not used to seeing themselves that the Archangels Michael and Raphael to way, and it’s exciting and kind of Mary Magdalen to Maria Goretti to Padre Pio. shocking.”

The latter we encounter as a young The image of St Clare — “a woman man.

St Teresa of Avila, in a striking of fierce holiness” — is one of the phoimage, is kneeling in prayer as her gaze tographer’s favourite shoots and final penetrates our soul. St Joan of Arc, images. “It came out better than I had whose photo provides the logo for The planned, and I still love it,” she said.

Saints Project, has a face speckled with Another favourite is “The Solemthe mud of the battlefield; she looks nity of Mary”, a tender depiction of the defiantly heavenwards. St Peregrine Blessed Virgin hits the road with a strong, serene face with her infant while his knee is bleeding. And St Son. “It was an Veronica, the patron saint of photog‘outtake’ image raphers, is holding the cloth on which and wasn’t supJesus’ face superimposed itself during posed to be part her act of mercy on the Via Dolorosa. of the shoot, but it’s my most popRelatable saints ular image now,” Kristyn’s idea is to find average said Kristyn, whose website people to portray the saints in classic features an ex- poses using modern photographic methods. This emphasises that the saints were, in many ways, ordinary people and not idealised images on St Clare of Assisi prayer cards. In that way they are reis portrayed by latable while encouraging the viewer the photograto follow God’s call to them, just as the pher’s mother.

generally I am inspired by a saint and then just wait for the right person to come along to portray them,” Kristyn said. Her artistic process involves a lot of prayer, even asking the saint being portrayed for their intercession, she said, happily admitting that she is not in control — the Holy Spirit is always at work.

There are signs of that.

For example, unbeknown to Kristyn, the man she chose to portray St Raphael turned out to have a devotion to…

St Raphael. Likewise, her model for St Lucy had chosen that saint for her confirmation name.

Of course, the devout St Maximilian Kolbe is shown wearing his Catholic has her favourite Franciscan habit as well as the striped jacket saints. “Without a doubt, of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where he my all-time favourite go-to was martyred. saint is Mary. And then St All photos courtesy of Kristyn Brown Michael, Maximilian Kolbe saints did. Importantly, she stressed, and Padre Pio,” said the photographer, her images mustn’t look “tacky”. who has received several commissions, “The process to choose saints and the highest-profile being the creation portrayers is different every time, but of a banner for the youth congress por-

Kristyn Brown

tion of the World Meeting of Families in 2015.

There are still many saints to be photographed, but her next major project — other than the big job of being a mom to her three children, aged 9, 7 and 1 — is to portray the Twelve Apostles.

• Don’t miss next issue with a “Saint of the Month” centrespread poster

by Kristyn Brown. See or buy her images at www.thesaintsproject.org/

The Southern Cross

25

The story of a church-builder The Catholic Church in South Africa was built by great missionaries. DALUXOLO MOLOANTOA looks at the amazing life of one of them, Fr Camillus De Hovre OMI.

T

HE MISSIONARY OBLATES of Mary Immaculate were responsible for much of the evangelisation of many parts of Southern Africa. One of these pioneering missionary Oblates in what today is Gauteng was Belgian-born Fr Camillus De Hovre, who was the driving force behind the rise of several major parishes a century ago.

Camillus De Hovre was born on June 3, 1880 in Antwerp into a staunchly Catholic family that had made great contributions to modern Belgian classical music. His uncle was an influential priest, and in his early twenties the young Camillus decided to answer his calling to become a priest.

He entered the seminary in Brussels in 1904 with the clear intention of becoming a missionary in Africa after his ordination as an Oblate priest. After taking his final vows in 1912, he came to South Africa, arriving in Pretoria as expansion plans were underway, guided by the new bishop of the vicariate of Transvaal, the Oblate Charles Cox. In 1919 Bishop Cox sent Fr De Hovre to Alexandra township, on the northern edge of Johannesburg, to begin a new mission there. Assisted by three Catholic women, who contributed £400 each, Fr De Hovre bought two plots of land for the purposes of building a church. In February 1920 the parish of St Hubert was officially opened. A second building was built as a convent.

Bishop Cox made a request for the Sisters of the Holy Cross to come from Mariannhill in Natal to occupy the convent, and to begin a primary

school. After the establishment of both the church and the tworoomed primary school, Fr De Hovre returned to his residence in Pretoria in the priest’s house at the old St Mary’s cathedral (today the site of Loreto Convent School).

A new assignment

In August 1920, Bishop Cox had a new assignment for his fellow Oblate: to establish a mission in a so-called slum in the north of Pretoria called Bantule Location. Again Holy Cross Sisters were called from Mariannhill, to help him establish a convent and mission at Bantule.

Fr Camillus De Hovre OMI as a young man.

He came to South Africa in 1912, and established five important missions in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

that a Catholic church be raised in their village. The men had walked for three days before they were directed to St Teresa’s mission in their endeavour “to ‘find the True Church’ in Pretoria”, as the priest recorded in his diary. It was the feast of the Epiphany, and Fr De Hovre discerned divine providence at work.

Soon his bicycle came into good use as the priest began to cycle to Mmakau village to begin a mission there. After consultation with the local chief, Albert Motsepe, he was allocated a piece of land to begin a mission station there.

It was the feast of the Epiphany, and Fr De Hovre discerned divine providence at work

26

The Southern Cross

Initially Fr De Hovre cycled daily from the city to Bantule, but he soon took residence in a small room that was constructed as an outbuilding to the new St Teresa’s convent. Now living at St Teresa’s mission, the priest realised that there was an increasing need for a place that could help people suffering from leprosy in the Pretoria area. So he secured funding from contacts in Belgium to build the Westfort Leper Asylum in the Hercules suburb of Pretoria, a stone’s throw from Bantule Location.

On January 6, 1921, Fr De Hovre returned to his home at St Teresa’s mission to find a delegation of seven men sitting around his dwellings.

They had come from Mmakau village in the De-Wildt area to request

‘We shall not move’

On a mulberry tree at the entrance to that piece of land, he put up a sign that read, “From here we shall never move!” Soon a small rondavel was built for his residence. In May 1921 he enlisted the assistance of local men to build the church, which would be dedicated to the Most Holy Redeemer.

Again Bishop Cox enlisted the assistance of the Sisters of the Holy Cross from Natal, to come and help Fr De Hovre at the new mission. In 1926, the Sisters started the De-Wildt

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Roman Catholic Primary School. It was the first school in Mmakau, and welcomed Catholic and non-Catholic school children alike.

In 1929, after having spent eight years at the Most Holy Redeemer mission, Fr De Hovre decided that it was time to move on. He returned to St Teresa’s mission at Bantule, and resumed his work with Fr De Hovre explains the crucifix to the sick at the Westfort children. Right: The church of the Leper Asylum, as well as Most Holy Redeemer in Mmakau, serving as chaplain to the which will be 100 years old next mission primary school year. started there by the Holy Mission #5 Cross Sisters.

Around 1931 Fr By 1929 the African parents of De Hovre used to the slum location of Lady Selborne cycle the 80km, often were sending their children to St in extreme heat, to Teresa’s mission school, a distance of the tiny village of 6km across the Daspoort Bridge. Fr Marokolong, further north of PretoDe Hovre felt sorry for the ragged ria in the Hammanskraal area. In beand barefoot children. In winter, tween meeting his other obligations, they travelled the long distance to he would spend a few days at Hamschool without having had a warm manskraal, often with no sustenance meal. He asked the Holy Cross Sisexcept for a loaf of bread and a bag ters to start a school at Lady Selof peanuts. With the assistance of borne. By the end of the year, one of one of the local men, he erected a the Sisters and an assistant from Alisimple oblong building to serve as a wal North were travelling daily to new mission. He gave it the name of Lady Selborne. his favourite saint, St Camillus, the A corrugated hut served as the patron saint of the sickly. first school building. There were 43 Soon a primary school was built, students on the school roll. By the and Fr De Hovre’s one and only trip end of the first term, this number back home to Belgium on leave afhad risen to 220. Fr De Hovre forded him the opportunity to raise bought two more hectares of land funds for the further development of adjoining the property. On it he the school and mission. built four more rooms to add to the school.

On Sunday, January 12, 1936, Fr De Hovre had a sudden illness. He At the beginning of 1930 a doucould not say morning Mass, and he ble-storey convent was built on the spent the day lying on a mattress land, now called Little Flower misunder a tree outside the church. He sion, and some Holy Cross Sisters declined an offer to transport him to from St Teresa’s mission moved into the local doctor. “No,” he said, ”let it. The ground floor of the building me die amongst my people.” After served as school classrooms, with a much persuasion Fr De Hovre finally chapel, while the top floor served as agreed to leave St Camillus mission the Sisters’ quarters.

for medical care.

On the morning of January 17, Bishop David O’Leary — another Oblate, who in 1925 had succeeded Bishop Cox — visited Fr De Hovre at Kensington Sanitorium in Johannesburg.

They had a long conversation about plans to set up new missions.

Just a few hours later, at 13:00, Fr De Hovre suddenly collapsed and died. He was only 56.

His funeral at St Teresa’s mission in Bantule was attended by thousands of mourners.

The scene at his graveside in Bantule Location was indicative of the love and admiration that he had had for people of all races.

The people had lost a father, a friend and a caregiver like none they had known before. Many remained at his graveside for many hours after the burial; such was the sense of loss caused by Fr De Hovre’s death.

Many more years later, in 1983, his two nephews and a niece came to South Africa, and spent time visiting the missions and other places that their uncle had founded.

In 2008, his eldest nephew, Bishop Luc De Hovre, the retired auxiliary of Antwerp, spent a month at the Most Holy Redeemer mission in Mmakau, providing major funding for the refurbishing of the church which his uncle had founded, and also hosting a weeklong retreat, with the resident Stigmatine Fathers. He died the following year at 83.

Plans are underway for Fr De Hovre’s family to attend the centenary celebrations of the Most Holy Redeemer mission next year.

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A history of SA’s Catholic press The printed word is the companion to the spoken word, keeping us alive to the spirit of Christ. SYDNEY DUVAL reviews the history of Catholic media in South Africa.

T

HIS NARRATIVE OF SOUTH Africa’s Catholic press begins in 1850 with the tellingly-titled The Colonist, which was published in Grahamstown (now Makhanda) until 1859.

Twelve years later, in 1891, the bishops of the region launched The Catholic Magazine of South Africa, a publication edited for 19 years by Mgr Frederick Kolbe that survived its unimaginative title until 1920, when it was discontinued as the new national Catholic newspaper, The Southern Cross, was launching. A full set of the magazine was collected by the late Fr John Brady OMI for the Catholic archive at Victory Park parish in Johannesburg.

The 1930s saw the birth of two other Catholic titles. The Catholic Times was founded to rival The Southern Cross; it survived until the 1950s. And in 1934, the Catholic Women’s League founded Trefoil magazine.

The Catholic community has been reading Trefoil for more than 80 years.

The publication was started as a fundraiser for social justice works, guided over the years by five consecutive laywoman editors, all working in a voluntary capacity, according to editorial committee member Frances Correia.

After becoming independent in 1971, Trefoil was reshaped as a fullcolour glossy magazine in 1989. Under editor Else Strivens, Trefoil became a brilliant success story of 64 pages with a circulation of 7 000 at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown. Part of its impact comprised its remarkable menu of indepth reflective articles on a broad range of topics for the faith community.

From art to theology, from world events to current issues, from storytelling to papal teaching, from contemporary so-

28

The Southern Cross

ciety to memorabilia, Trefoil seeks to inform and inspire its readers to join together in building community.

The success of UmAFRIKA

Abbot Francis Pfanner, the Trappist founder of Mariannhill, was a visionary and, in many ways, a feisty man ahead of his times. He demonstrated this in his various missionary endeavours, from horsepower and hydroelectric generators to printing works and progressive farming methods that so impressed Mahatma Gandhi. He engaged with Durban and Maritzburg newspapers to argue for the education and social upliftment of the local Zulu-speaking communities — for all to cooperate in efforts to build “better fields, better homes, better hearts”. Pfanner produced newsletters that he sent to Germany and Austria to inform parishes and donors there of the missionary work they were supporting.

Mindful of the enterprising activities of their founder, the Congregation of Missionaries of Mariannhill (CMM), took the power of the printing press to heart as an instrument of evangelisation.

In 1910 they founded Izindaba Zibantu, which became UmAFRIKA in 1928.

By the early 1990s, under the edi-

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torship of Anthony Ndlovu and combined liberation struggle thinking of Cyril Madlala and Fr Dieter Gahlen CMM, UmAFRIKA had become the biggest alternative newspaper in South Africa with a weekly circulation of some 72 000. The weekly was respected for its courageous, discerning reporting on the violent strife between contending political forces in KwaZulu-Natal in the runup to the first democratic election in 1994. Robben Island prisoners read UmAFRIKA. After the 1994 general election, UmAFRIKA shared the fate of several alternative newspapers as circulation began to slide, eventually forcing its closure in 2013. It reopened in 2017, but closed again in 2018. Talks are ongoing to explore reviving UmAFRIKA as an online publication.

Another CMM publication was Intsimbi, which Fr Michael Riedener CMM first published as a Xhosa newsletter from his Bedford parish in 1964. He moved it to Mthatha in 1966 as a newspaper, but it closed in the early 1990s.

Setting a challenge

In Johannesburg in 1964, Paul Goller fixed the name Challenge to the magazine he started during the Second Vatican Council, the Rivonia Treason Trial and the reigns of Verwoerd and Vorster. Colleagues of Goller knew him as a daunting intellect quick to challenge comfortable or suspect assumptions, especially concerning social justice. So it was no surprise when Challenge’s major concerns could be summarised as lay responsibility in Church and society, and opposition to the evils of apartheid, while also embracing the invigorating spirit of renewal released

by Vatican II in liturgy, theology and personal moral responsibility.

What was considered by many a major achievement was Challenge’s willingness to examine the Church’s teaching on birth control. It uniquely published the majority opinion of Pope VI’s commission on birth control favouring change. Other achievements included using South African artists — from Sr Pientia to Judith Mason and Franz Hodi — to enliven its somewhat severe but clean appearance. At times it also engaged, in English, with the Afrikaans community, both Catholic and Protestant.

Challenge lasted six years purely on lay financial support, until affected by debt. Erratic appearances were also an ominous sign, as was the emergence of Black Consciousness which would have required a more vigorous opposition to the regime. “The stance of ‘no advertising’ turned out to be a principled deci-

brilliant publishing success in South Africa, with instructive articles on Church and life in Africa and a circulation of 4 000. Fr Raphael Armada MCCJ is succeeding Fr Joseph Rebelo MCCJ as its new editor.

The parish connection

The isiZulu newspaper UmAFRIKA was one of the great success stories in Catholic media. Seen here around 1990 are (back from left) Fred Khumalo, Simon Lushaba, Tony Vincent, editor Anthony Ndlovu, (standing middle row) Renee Mtshali, Fr Dieter Gahlen CMM, Ignatius Mdadane, Geshenge Kunene, editorial adviser Sydney Duval, future editor Cyril Madlala, Bongani Shoba and Chris Hlongwa, (seated front) John Ngcobo and Vitas Mchunu. Photo courtesy of Sydney Duval

sion, but the underlying reality was that we were radical enough to frighten off Catholic businessmen,” Goller recalled.

“But the support of ‘progressive’ Catholics made it worthwhile, as did the vigorous debate it often stimulated.”

Dominican influence

For the Dominicans, the social communications apostolate was a prime and productive outreach, graced by some prolific and influential writers among them. Historian Br Philippe Denis OP, professor of the History of Christianity at the University of KZN, is among them, along with eminent theologians such as Fr Albert Nolan OP. Fr Nolan edited an ecumenical monthly magazine, also called Challenge, published by the Institute for Contextual Theology in the 1990s. The idea was to produce quality information on social, political and religious matters.

His term ended in 2000 when he became vicar-general of the Southern African Dominican Vicariate.

Fr Bernard Connor OP, a priest with strong concerns for social justice, edited the much-admired and intellectually stimulating Grace & Truth from the mid1980s to 1995 when it was handed over to St Joseph's Theological Institute. His media ministry included editorship of The Southern Cross from 1991-95.

The Dutch Dominicans pioneered an Afrikaans apostolate with the initial idea of converting Afrikaners to Catholicism — an outreach that became more ecumenical with Vatican II. They ven-

tured into uncharted waters with Die Brug, the brainchild of Bishop Gerard van Velsen OP of Kroonstad.

Flemish Dominican Father Reginald Dellaert was editor of the first issue in April 1952. Br Philippe remembers him as a supporter of apartheid until his death in the late 1980s. Fr Dellaert produced only two issues, followed by Fr Joseph Gomes OP, who stayed until 1957, followed by Fr Hyacinth Engering OP, with Fr Dirk van Etten OP as administrator. Readers wanting to know more on this period should see Philippe Denis’ book The Dominican Friars in Southern Africa. A Social History (15771990), published in 1998.

The Dominicans also brought Catholic radio to South Africa. Fr Emil Blaser OP showed indomitable resilience in masterminding the creation of Radio Veritas in 1999, taking the Word to the airways to serve South Africa in seven languages.

The Comboni Missionaries’ Worldwide magazine, launched Fr Anton Pramstrahler MCCJ in 1996, is another

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Redemptorist Pastoral Publications (RPP) began in 1993 as a source of support for faith and liturgical life. The brainchild of Redemptorist Fathers Sean Wales and Martin Gay, it was the launchpad for the “Catholic Link” in 1993, which in media talk could be called a smash hit with a circulation of 60 000 spread across 350 parishes. Here was a bright new lighthouse for scanning spiritual impulses. Fr Wales served for years as its first editor.

Encouraged by the success of a similar Redemptorist venture in England, the “Catholic Link” was founded to keep people in the pews connected to the parish and the Gospel. The front features reflections and references for weekday readings, and on the blank reverse parishes print essential information and notices. The “Catholic Link” has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. It was published digitally throughout the lockdown and RPP hopes to resume printing in December.

RPP was started with the aim of publishing booklets and pamphlets to accompany the Redemptorists in their outreach in parish missions as integral to their ministry. The booklets have grown into books, with Fr Larry Kaufmann CSsR as the current director.

Finally, Inter Nos served as the inhouse journal of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference from the mid-1960s. The last copy available in the archives was dated December 1995, a pull-out supplement to The Southern Cross, designed by the weekly’s staff, with no reference to any closure. Mgr J R Hughes, secretary for the social communications commission, was the first editor. Its mandate was to reflect the activities of all the SACBC commissions and departments, especially the Commission of the Laity.

Few dioceses have their own printed media, though the archdioceses of Johannesburg and Cape Town publish content-filled tabloid-sized newspapers, both titled Archdiocesan News.

Other publications have come and gone. Some still ring bells from memory — the Marianna in Durban, the Angelus in Windhoek. They, too, with the publications named in this narrative, shared a window on the Catholic world with The Southern Cross.

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Write to us

We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them.

We may publish your letters on our website. Please include a postal address (not for publication). Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Pseudonyms are acceptable only under special circumstances at the Editor’s discretion. Send your letters to editor@scross.co.za

Letters

Opinions expressed in The Southern Cross, especially in Letters to the Editor, do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication or those of the Catholic hierarchy.

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EARTFELT CONGRATULATIONS! The first issue of The Southern Cross magazine has kept me engrossed for some time. It feels like having an old friend back in your life!

Thanks to all those who were involved in sharing this treat with us – the variety of topics, the layout and the colourful design. It is a real masterpiece of journalism, considering all the pain, disappointments and the uncertainties that preceded it.

Yours is a real success story that so touched me that I printed the magazine in full colour as a blessing to share with all the convent Sisters. They were soon flocking around the “new member of the convent” welcoming it with open arms and with expressions of admiration. As religious and missionaries we must never lose our love of the written word.

Sr Melinda Seiler remarked: “It’s great and looks very attractive. I immediately read three articles.”

You have shown us what can be done through creative responses to times of adversity. Be assured of our continued support as readers and subscribers.

Sr M Ellen Lindner FNS, Nkandla, KZN

You have found a good way forward

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ONGRATULATIONS TO ALL who contributed to creating the magazine version of your valued publication which my family has been reading since the 1940s.

The cover featuring Pope Francis is brilliant, transporting the reader back 100 years to the very launching of the publication when Pope Benedict XV featured on the frontpage — a poignant and meaningful connection!

The wide choice of interesting articles that have appeal to different ages, and the photography adding those all-important faces and images, combine to deliver variety and quality.

You can be proud of having found a way forward in very difficult times. Well done!

Denise Doz, Calgary, Canada

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Y FIRST RECOLLECTION OF reading a copy of The Southern Cross was in 1950, when I was but 11 years old. While for the next two years we did not have access to the publication every week — we lived in a rural area — in 1953 this changed, and almost weekly The Southern Cross was a part of my life. Nothing changed over all the years.

With that background, I am but one of, I am sure, the many who are saddened at the end of the weekly newspaper. As long as I am, as a pensioner, able to afford subscribing to the new publication, I will endeavour to do so.

I wish you success in this venture and, may I say, labour of love for our Faith.

Neville Gallichan, by e-mail

Great ‘new normal’

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AVING JUST DOWNLOADED your new magazine in digital format, I’ve done a very quick page-through. Wow! It looks amazing, and I look forward to a proper read-through.

And I know that my mother will be delighted to see her favourite crossword puzzle.

May your “new normal” grow in strength and popularity.

Heidi Coates, by e-mail

Southern Cross is not free

We have been told that some readers are sharing the full issues of The Southern Cross magazine on social media.

We are delighted that some readers love their Southern Cross magazine so much that they want to share it with others. But after we gave the Southern Cross newspaper away for free during lockdown, the Southern Cross magazine is available only for sale.

So PLEASE DO NOT SHARE The Southern Cross digitally!

But please do encourage people to buy the magazine or subscribe to it!

Photo: World Watch Monitor

An old friend is back Reader since 1950

Pray for this kidnapped nun

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ONGRATULATIONS ON THE new Southern Cross magazine.

It is of the highest level of excellence, and worthy of a place in the bookstands of the world.

As Christmas approaches, I should like to put out another appeal for the kidnapped Colombian nun, Sr Cecelia Gloria Navaerez Argoti (pictured above), who remains in captivity somewhere in Mali. This will be her fifth Christmas in the hands of Islamic jihadists.

I support the efforts of Dr Imtiaz Sooliman of the Muslim charity Gift of the Givers who has acknowledged her situation, and the fact that delicate negotiations were taking place to secure her release, as well as some others (including the body of a killed South African doctor).

The Church is remaining tightlipped, and Sr Cecelia Gloria’s name is unknown among many priests and religious (even Colombians) whom I have asked. It is a delicate situation.

However, in the spirit of the early Church — which prayed incessantly when the Apostle Peter was thrown into prison till the doors were opened wide — we today, who have come to appreciate the dignity of women in the Church and society, ought to pray for Sr Cecelia Gloria (what a nice name to pray for in the coming Christmas season) Argoti with the same fervour, until her captors deliver her safely to celebrate Christmas with her own. Deo Volente.

Donations to Gift of the Givers for this cause would be welcomed (Reference: “Release Sr Cecelia Gloria Argoti”).

Fr Sean Collins CSsR, Cape Town

How well is all with my soul?

Nthabiseng Maphisa: Millennial Catholic

Singer John Legend knows how to be a channel for the stirrings of the soul.

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God dwelling within us

I have often found myself bored at hearing that God dwells within us. Maybe it has been said too often, or perhaps it was out of fear of the implication of those words that I have chosen to gloss over it. It’s very convenient, I suppose, to limit thinking about this only to Christmas Day or the Easter Triduum. But rarely is it fun to ponder God dwelling in us on a social Friday night or a chilled Sunday afternoon. I think I know why.

The world around us seems comfortable with separating the soul from the body — or more accurately, living in a manner which suggests that the soul does not exist. In some ways we, as Christians, are guilty of this. We piously receive Communion on Sunday, but on Monday we are being judgmental of people or slanderous, or — here I might have to raise my hand by way of confession — ceaselessly uttering profanities.

But if I dare to be honest with myself, if my soul is to be the place where the Lord may “take his delight”, I fear

Photo: James Dimmock/NBC/CNS

AM A BIG FAN OF THE TELEVISION COMMERCIALS produced by a local fast-food chicken franchise with a rhyming name that is neither Portuguese nor from the south of the United States.

You and I may see hundreds of adverts in any given week, but to me these ones stand out. It is not because they are inviting patrons to buy hot wings or sliders that these commercials attract my attention but rather because there is humour that is relatable to South Africans.

More importantly to me, at the end of each advertisement is the chain’s slogan: “Soul Food”. I don’t think they’re suggesting that there exists within the human soul a cavity that is filled by fried chicken. But I think they intend to suggest that there is something about comfort food — whatever that means to us — that soothes the ache in the soul.

If you’re like me, you may have thought of the soul as an entity separate from yourself. In Christian circles this idea is perpetuated by the words of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). In the original Greek of the Gospel text, Matthew uses the word pneuma, which in this passage refers to the soul of person. In truth, the soul remains hidden from us. We cannot see it, at least not in this life. And yet in some way many of us can imagine what it means to “feed the soul”. We know that it is part of us.

Singers like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson or John Legend certainly know how to be a channel for the stirrings of the soul. Popular culture provides many examples of caricatures of the soul. I’m thinking here of old cartoons like Casper the Friendly Ghost (a pale and slightly transparent blob with arms and a face) and The Addams Family.

Rather poetically, St Teresa of Avila in her famous work The Interior Castle describes the soul as follows: “I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions. If we reflect, sisters, we shall see that the soul of the just man is but a paradise in which, God tells us, he takes his delight.”

This is very different from Casper indeed.

he may find it not to be a gilded palace but a dusty room with a cracked mirror and old socks. It is no surprise, then, that at times it feels as though God has departed from me.

In my folly, I have starved my soul of the nourishing milk of virtue and stuffed it with the bland margarine of sin.

Draw the curtains, polish the silverware, let all be at its best that Christ the King may in your soul take his rest.

Catholic Institute of Education

Called in faith

to serve

Catholic schools and skills centres

Educating today tomorrow for the common good.

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9:40 AM

Sometimes just keep it simple

Raymond Perrier on Faith & Society

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S WE MARK THE CENTENARY of The Southern Cross, it is tempting not only to look back over 100 years but also to imagine ourselves 100 years forwards.

What is likely to change?

One thing which will definitely change is technology — we only have to pause to consider the many ways in which technology over the past century has already changed our lives (and so also our Church). Of course, the Church’s relationship with science has been complex, with great support for science on the one hand (like the pontifical academies), and the silencing of scientists like Galileo and Teilhard de Chardin on the other.

But over the past 100 years the Church has usually embraced technology (even if a bit late) and used it to good effect. You might be reading this article on a computer, or even on your phone; what is more, a reader in London can access it at the same time as one in East London.

And it’s not just about digital access. Technology has radically changed the way in which newspapers and magazines have been produced, massively reducing costs and speeding up production. The lovely colour pictures that you enjoy in the printed magazine would have been unaffordable for the first half of the last 100 years, and even very costly just 20 years ago.

Over the next 100 years, who knows what further developments in

technology there will be? Perhaps my article will be beamed straight from my brain into yours without any intermediary of printed words at all — a scary thought which would require all of us writers to do a lot more self-editing! Perhaps I myself will be redundant, with Artificial Intelligence generating this article from an algorithm based on what the reader is interested in, what is topi-

Church to have at its disposal and to employ any of these media insofar as they are necessary or useful for the instruction of Christians and all its efforts for the welfare of souls” (Inter Mirifica 3).

That focus on the end — building the kingdom, preaching the Gospel, ministering to the poor, developing community — will help us judge how to use new technologies and also when they are just not appropriate.

My favourite admonitory story about technology comes from the time of the Space Race. The Americans were very anxious about how their astronauts would write in space, given the effect of zero gravity. They experimented with different kinds of pens and various consistencies of ink.

Yet for all their technological prowess, they still made no progress. When the Soviet Union sent up their cosmonauts they armed them with a spectacularly effective writing instrument: a pencil!

This is to warn us that sometimes we get so carried away with the latest technology that we forget about the simple solutions.

A group of homeless men in Durban have started growing vegetables in their emergency shelter, and the Denis Hurley Centre is helping them to generate revenue from this. I asked recently what ideas they had for marketing their produce, and they were very excited about having a website or a Facebook page.

They seemed a bit disappointed when I suggested that the most effective way might be a simple printed flyer that they could drop off at the buildings next door to alert the hundreds of potential customers who were living close

We chase after ‘social media’ when the most social form of media – talking to people – is overlooked

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cal, and what Church teaching has to share. (How do we know that this article wasn’t written by a robot?)

A means, not an end

We need to continue to look at technologies as they emerge — not being scared or suspicious of them. But we also always need to remember that they are a means to an end and not an end in themselves.

Over 50 years ago, talking about the new technologies of that era, the Vatican II document on social communication captured this succinctly: “It is, therefore, an inherent right of the

Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI by, and have an old-fashioned sign at the shelter entrance.

In the same way, we need to reflect on what we have learnt about technology during the lockdown. Its use by some parishes has been phenomenal; St Joseph’s in Morningside, Durban, springs to mind. They have used a variety of different formats to give people access to the Mass, catechetical instruction, online retreats and times of reflection.

These are all great and we need to continue to develop new ideas. But as Catholics — that is, universal — we’re also beholden to make sure we share technology in a way that doesn’t limit access to only a small elite. And at the same time we must not neglect the simpler methods.

I hope that priests who have been stressing about Zoom-Masses have also spent some time just picking up the phone and have a chat with parishioners who are stuck at home, especially the elderly and the isolated. We are tempted to chase after “social media” when the most social form of media — talking to people — is overlooked.

And when we do engage with technology, let’s bring in our values and ethos and not succumb to the often value-free environment that many technology companies foster, as a means of making them more money. Twitter could be an effective way of sharing our faith in a succinct and accessible way.

But sadly, some Church people (often very senior) have fallen prey to the slanging-match mentality for which Twitter has become renowned. We should not be hiding behind technology to say things that we would be embarrassed to say face-to-face.

And let’s also not get carried away with ourselves. Technology can be used to deliver complex information, but sometimes all people want is a simple answer. So if you run a parish website, go and check how many clicks it takes for people to find out the answer to the most popular question asked online: “What time is Mass?”

Let’s embrace new technologies over the next 100 years but always remember that they are at the service of the people and to be used in the service of God. All the rest is a loud gong or clashing cymbal!

The ordinary face of evil

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E TEND TO BE NAÏVE about evil, at least as to what it looks like in everyday life. Our picture of evil has been falsely shaped by images taken from mythology, religious cults, and from books and movies that portray evil as personified in sinister spiritual forces.

Demons haunt houses, appear at séances, are summoned up by ouija boards, contort bodies, and are exorcised by the sprinkling of holy water.

Whatever evil does reside inside this concept of demonic forces (and you can believe in them or not) is infinitely eclipsed by the ordinary face of evil which looks out at us from newscasts, is daily manifest in ordinary life, and even in our own face on a given day. Mostly we are blind to the hidden evil that foments inside us, tears communities apart, and eats away at God and goodness. The Gospels can help us understand this.

In the Gospels, the Evil One has two names because evil works in two ways.

Sometimes the Gospels call the evil force “the devil”, and other times they call it “Satan”. What’s the difference? In the end they both refer to the same force (or person), but the different names refer to the different ways in which evil works. Devil, in Greek, means to slander and to tear things apart. Ironically, Satan means almost the exact opposite. It means to unite things, but in a sick and malevolent way.

So evil works in two ways: the devilish works by dividing us from each other, tearing us apart, and having us habitually slander each other so that community is forever being broken through jealousy and accusation.

The satanic does the opposite, with the same result. The satanic unites us in a sick way, that is, through the grip of mobhysteria, social hype, self-serving ideologies, racism, sexism, envy, hatred and in myriad other malevolent ways so as to draw us into mob-hatred, gang-rapes, lynchings, and crucifixions. It was satanic forces that engineered Jesus’ crucifixion.

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hen we look at our world today, from politics to social media to what’s happening inside many of our religious circles, we would have to be blind not to see the powers of the “devil” and of “satan” at work (however you personally define and picture these).

Where do we see the devilish at work?

Basically everywhere. Today, you see people sowing division, attributing false motives to others, calling for them to be distrusted and ostracised almost every-

where. Indeed, this is almost the dominant element we see in our politics and in our social media. The result is the breakdown of community, the stalemate in our politics, the breakdown of civility, the loss of trust in the meaning of truth, the smug belief that our own idiosyncratic narrative functions as truth, and the near-universal neglect of elemental charity. Today we are witnessing a dangerous breakdown of trust and civility, and a massive erosion of simple honesty. The devil must be smiling.

Where do we see the satanic at work?

Everywhere as well. More and more we are retreating into tribes, gangs, with those others who think like us and have the same self-interests to protect. While this can be a good thing, it’s not good when we unite in ways that are rooted in selfserving ideologies, economic privilege, racism, sexism, false nationalism, envy, and hatred. When this happens, our group ceases being a community and becomes instead a mob, a sick one, which at the end of the day, whatever its particular idiosyncratic slogan, ends up chanting, as did the crowds on Good Friday, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

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t’s significant that in the Gospels almost every time the word “crowd” is used, it’s used pejoratively. Commentators tell us that almost without exception, every time the word “crowd” appears in the Gospels it could be preceded by the adjective “mindless”. Crowds are mindless; worse still, they generally have a sick bent towards crucifixion. The renowned Czech novelist Milan Kundera highlights this when he shares his strong fear of “the great march”, the sick fever that so generally infects a crowd and, soon enough, has them chanting: “Release to us Barabbas! And as for Jesus, crucify him!” This is the face of satan in ordinary life, the actual face of evil.

We need to name this today as we see the ever-intensifying and bitter polarisation inside our families, communities, neighbourhoods, cities, and countries.

Factionalism, anger, bitterness, distrust, accusation, and hatred are intensifying almost everywhere — even inside our own families where we are finding it harder and harder to sit down together, be civil with each other, and talk through our political, social, and moral differences. Sadly, even the deadly presence of a pandemic which threatens all of us has worked to divide rather than unite us.

Evil doesn’t ordinarily have the face and feel of the devil in Rosemary’s Baby; it has the face and feel of this evening’s news.

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Beware of corruption inside the Church The Church rightly condemns corruption in government and business — but it must also be conscious of corruption within, warns BISHOP SITHEMBELE SIPUKA.

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HERE ARE MANY GROUNDS, biblical and theological, that justify pronouncement and action against corruption as an essential part of the mission of the Church. These can be summarised into two: firstly, the concern, love, compassion and preference that God has for the poor; and secondly, the priority of the common good over individual and personal wants.

Corruption violates these fundamental biblical and theological values and so the Churches are within their mandate to speak and act against corruption.

However, the saying, “When you point a finger, there are three fingers pointing back at you”, reminds us that it is imperative to examine what these three fingers are pointing back at us, as Church, in relation to corruption. In clear conscience, can we say that, as Church, we are free of what we are condemning in others? An honest answer to this question cannot be affirmative.

The duty to point out and act against corruption in government and business is also an opportunity for the Church to introspect about attitudes and practices in her life and work that smack of corruption. Moreover, the Church is seen worldwide as a moral authority, so when she is also corrupt, her role as a lighthouse of goodness is discredited.

Corruption in the Church

Corruption takes different forms, and the three that occur most in the Church are misappropriation of funds, sexual abuse, and lack of work ethic. In mentioning them here, the intention is to invite alertness to them, because they may silently creep in without our awareness, become a way of life, and then lead us to be surprised when we are accused of corruption.

Let me hasten to add that the corrupt traits which I note here are not true for all priests and religious. They apply to some but they taint us all, and we must all be awake to them because they can also characterise us.

Here I wish to focus specifically on misappropriation of funds, which can

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occur on account of ignorance or on account of fraudulent intentions.

Ignorant misappropriation is facilitated by lack of proper management of funds. This leads to individuals unduly benefiting from funds which were not meant for their benefit. Usually it happens with innocently filling a “need that suddenly presented itself” with money that was not meant for it. Often money is spent not even for “needs” but for personal “wants”.

Such misappropriation of funds is often accompanied by lack of recording, so that when the time comes to account for the money, the person does not know what he has done with it. Lack of accounting mechanisms, such as reports and financial quarterly returns, also feed this type of misappropriation of funds.

The remedy is for one to learn and practise financial management and stick to the rules of accounting.

Sheer greed for money

The second form of misappropriation of funds is sheer greed for money, when a person knowingly diverts funds meant for something else, to instead benefit him or herself, family or friends.

The remedy for this form of misappropriation is to fire the person and have them charged.

Another form of fraudulent misappropriation is what could be called “double-dipping”. This is when a person is paid and provides the expected goods or services, but then uses the time and

Curial Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was forced to resign in September over corruption allegations. Photo: Paul Haring/CNS

the skills for which he or she is paid to generate more income without declaring it. Double-dipping can also take the form of charging for what falls within one’s line of duty.

What if it is a priest or a religious who engages in this form of corruption?

The honest answer is that if the Church is calling for action against corrupt people in government and business, then that should also apply to those who practise or ignore corruption within the Church. Any suggestion for different treatment would be nothing less than clericalism, which unconsciously promotes the use of clerical status or power for selfish reasons and getting away with it. Corruption is the same, regardless of who perpetrates it, and logically the consequences must also be the same.

Trouble with clericalism

The culture of materialism is a temptation for some priests and religious who joined in the knowledge that the priesthood or consecrated life is an invitation to a frugal way of life, with the intention to serve and not to be served. As some progress towards the priesthood, however, and eventually become priests, they begin to see opportunities for a lucrative lifestyle.

The remedy is to go back to the original motivations for becoming a priest and to reignite the appreciation of evangelical counsels. It is to find again satisfaction in God who is “better than life” (Psalm 63) and who makes us indifferent to material things.

A cultural element contributing to mismanagement of funds is the pressure to support family members, as if a priest is earning a market-related salary. There is a temptation by relatives to forget that priesthood is a sacrifice, and that family members and friends should not expect to be supported by their priest son or priest uncle.

It is not fair for a priest to spend Church money on his family, and time and energy on family matters, when he had voluntarily given himself to the Church. Priests must avoid giving an impression to their families that they have access to “lots” of monies and that they are available 24/7 to attend to family matters; they belong to the Church as married people belongs to their families.

If this situation persists, such a priest should think about making a choice and find a salaried job to meet one’s family’s expectations.

• Bishop Sithembele Sipuka heads the diocese of Mthatha and is the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’s Conference.

Why we pray for our dead In November we pray for the faithful departed. FR RUNAINE RADINE explains why this is a beautiful part of our faith.

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RAYING FOR THE LIVING AND THE DEAD IS ONE OF the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. On All Souls Day and during the month of November, the Church prays for the faithful departed in a special way. This is a beautiful aspect of our Catholic faith. The catchphrase for this time is from the Second Book of Maccabees: “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins” (12:46).

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us once again just how fragile life can be. Death is certain for all of us. The God of the living and the dead is in charge of things, whether we realise it or not. These are among the many important lessons we can take from this time in history.

Death and funerals, especially those related to the virus, have been particularly difficult, given the various restrictions in place in our country. Families could not bury their loved ones in the usual way. With a limited number of mourners, burials often took place unceremoniously and within the shortest time possible. This has certainly intensified and perhaps prolonged mourning for a departed loved one.

On the positive side, the gathering of just the immediate family and close friends at funerals in the last few months has been rather striking. It spoke to the importance of family.

But the absence of the larger community left a mark of coldness too.

The comfort of November

Now is an opportune time to find new ways to be and to build community once again, and to show support for families in crises. Many families are still struggling from the consequences of the nationwide lockdown, and some may still be seeking healing even after recovering from the coronavirus. This November, then, should be particularly comforting as we practise the pious devotion of praying for the dead.

It is indeed a wholesome thought to be able to pray for a departed loved one or friend.

Since worship in our churches is slowly becoming available again, parish communities can use the opportunity to reach out to grieving families by making Masses for the dead available to them, particularly for those who died during the pandemic, or making time to visit and pray at their graves.

The teaching of the Church on purgatory regarding the holy souls is summarised in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1030) as follows: “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified [that is, when the reparation/penance or satisfaction is incomplete at the time of death for the damage caused by sins of which we already repented], are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. The Church

gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.”

The Eucharistic prayer at every Mass offered throughout the world includes prayers for the living and the dead. Offering the Holy Mass for the faithful departed is an expression of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus, who conquered death, and in the communion of saints. As believers on earth depend on the prayers of the saints in heaven, so too the souls in purgatory depend on our prayers and sacrifices so that they may reach heaven, where the Church is triumphant.

For this we pray: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. n Fr Runaine Radine is a priest of the diocese of Port Elizabeth.

“I was in prison and you visited me” Matt 25:36

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PRAY WITH THE POPE Every month FR CHRIS CHATTERIS SJ reflects on Pope Francis’ universal prayer intention.

Let the robots serve humanity!

Universal Intention: We pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind.

cated by computers, or is there something essential to education in the warmth and subtlety of human contact that would be lost in an over-use cisions about whether or not to launch of educational machines?

It is often assumed that it’s a good HOULD YOU BE A FAN OF THE nuclear weapons with the capacity to idea to create robots that relieve us of Terminator series of escapist films, annihilate millions of souls. the drudgery of repetitive, mindyou may remember this rather I suppose we can envisage some chilling phrase: “The rise of the benefits of military robots. If we send numbing or dangerous work. Mining machines”. It’s a sci-fi story in which our “soldier-bots” into battle, and is being done more and more by rocomputers try to take over from humans, whichever robot army triumphs then bots, and one can argue that mining is with a cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wins the war, human lives would be such a dangerous and dehumanising sent to 1984 from the future — 2029; spared. This would be better than task that it is better for robots to do it. only nine years to go — to kill the treating one’s troops as “cannon fod- But the miner who has no alternative mother of a future resistance leader. der”. It would be a war of robotic mer- but to go down daily into the dust and The fact is that all technology is cenaries; or as a robotic single-combat, darkness of the mine in order to earn his daily bread might well have no created by humans and therefore can a clash of champions. other options. never become superior to us in an This is not a simple matter, but overall sense. A computer may be able What should robots do? some of the principles of Catholic Soto do many more calculations per secThere’s no doubt that humanity cial Teaching can help us. The comond than a human being, but we all will have to come to some kind of in- mon good is one of these. Does a know how limited and even stupid ternational agreement about the use particular clever machine enhance the computers are. of artificial intelligence and robots, common good, or is it just a way of The problem is that technology, as and not just in warfare. These are our making money for a minority? a human creation, will always reflect “babies”, and so we are responsible for Solidarity is another. Do these mathe human condition. We just have to look at how armaments have developed them. We have to decide what we chines help us as a society to hang together better, or not? When we to see terrible examples of this. look at some of the technology And now we are being warned of Now weapons are programmed we are using at present, the interweapons, such as drones, that are not only to kill people but also net for example, we can see that programmed not only to kill peoit can be structured and organple but also to make “decisions” to ‘decide’ whom to kill ised either to atomise and sepaabout whom to kill. rate us one from another, or to The moral concern here is that, if soldiers in war use artificial in- want them to do and what not to do. bring us closer together.

The short answer is that it all detelligence to distance themselves from Do we really want them to take away decisions about who lives and who all our jobs, including professional pends on how we use it. An artificial dies, they will no longer take any moral ones? Do we want to be diagnosed and intelligence algorithm has recently responsibility for their actions. The treated by a robot or rather by a flesh- been used to create an antibiotic effecmoral scenario becomes even more and-blood doctor? Do we want to be tive against drug-resistant bacteria. alarming in the case where we leave it cared for by a robo-nurse in hospital? Such wise uses of artificial intelligence up to artificial intelligence to make de- Do we want our children to be edu- are surely answers to prayers.

S

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PRAYER

O Most beautiful flower of Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendour of heaven, Blessed Mother of the Son of God, Immaculate Virgin assist us in our necessity.

Leon & Karen

In Memoriam VON RUBEN – In memory of my beloved husband Mick, who died on November 10, 2001. Daily remembered and sadly missed by Maire. May he rest in peace

10 amazing reasons to pray

Prayer Corner Your prayers to cut out and collect Do you have a favourite prayer? Please send it with a reference to its origin, to editor@scross.co.za

1. Prayer protects us 2. Prayer changes things 3. Prayer keeps us in the will of God 4. Prayer draws you closer to God 5. Prayer gives you hope 6. Prayer decreases selfishness 7. Prayer heals 8. Prayer increases spiritual strength 9. Prayer gives us peace 10. Prayer makes you happy!

Daily prayer for All Souls that He might deliver them from the second death.

Prayer for those grieving For all those who woke this morning to the loneliness of bereavement — the empty bed or chair, an unaccustomed quietness, a life now incomplete — may they know Your presence in the stillness of the day, and through the love of friends who offer their condolence.

And in the darker moments may they reach out to hold Your hand and feel the warmth of the One who has already passed from death to life to welcome others into God’s Kingdom.

Amen

By His merits may they share in the glory of His victory over sin and death.

For all the faithful who have died we pray, but in particular those dear to us, parents, relatives and friends.

Nor do we forget all who did good to us while on earth, who helped us by their prayers, sacrifice and example.

Immortal God, Holy Lord, Father and protector of all You have created, we raise our hearts to You today for those who have passed out of this mortal life.

In Your loving mercy, Father of all, be pleased to receive them into Your heavenly company, and forgive the failings and faults they may had done from human frailty.

Your only Son, Christ, our Saviour, suffered so cruelly

We pray also for any who may have done us harm, and stand in special need of your forgiveness.

May the merits and prayers of our Virgin Mother, Mary, and those of all the Angels and Saints, speak for us and assist them now.

This we ask in Christ’s name.

Pope Francis’ Prayer to the Creator Lord, Father of our human family, You created all human beings equal in dignity: pour forth into our hearts a fraternal spirit and inspire in us a dream of renewed encounter, dialogue, justice and peace.

Move us to create healthier societies and a more dignified world, a world without hunger, poverty,

Amen

violence and war.

May our hearts be open to all the peoples and nations of the earth.

May we recognise the goodness and beauty that You have sown in each of us, and thus forge bonds of unity, common projects, and shared dreams. Amen From Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti (2020)

The Southern Cross

37

© Memory-Improvement-Tips.com. Reprinted with permission.

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Southern Crossword

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3. We remember them in this month (4,5) 8. Ungodly Don is missing. It’s unsightly (4) 9. Exits Avon roughly and gets irritations (9) 10. Kind of image that God forbids (6) 11. Don’t let the sun set on yours (Eph 4) (5) 14. Tomtit and dove have a big god at heart (5) 15. She hides in the adoration chapel (4) 16. Fish from odd parts in St Peter’s net (5) 18. Uncommonly lightly cooked (4) 20. Important topic for the children (5) 21. city of Jordan for him, we hear (5) 24. Yours can be toasted with joy (6) 25. Bishop may wear it on the canal (6,3) 26. Little demons (4) 27. Was drunk, yet put stucco on the church wall (9)

2. In which year was the first Catholic bishop appointed to what is now South Africa? a) 1768 b) 1818 c) 1868 3. Who of these current US sports legends is a Q6: Archbishop Hurley Catholic? a) Simone Biles b) Megan The Bells of St Mary?

Rapinoe c) Serena Williams a) Bing Crosby b) Frank Sinatra 4. What was the name of c) Fred Astaire Cain’s son? a) Enoch b) Isaac c) Nimrod 8. In which country is Africa’s largest Catholic 5. What is the origin of church? the word “dunce”, to de- a) Cote d’Ivoire b) Ghana note a stupid person? c) Nigeria a) An Irish Catholic post9. Who was the pope Reformation dance b) The Franciscan philoso- when Word War I ended? a) Pius X b) Benedict XV pher Duns Scotus c) Latin term for “heathen” c) Pius XI 6. Where was Archbishop Denis Hurley born? a) Cape Town b) Durban c) East London 7. Who played singing Fr O’Malley in the 1940s films Going My Way and

10. Which Gospel includes this quote: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well”? a) Mark b) Matthew c) Luke

DoWn

1. Where those in 3 across must wait (9) 2. Home of St Peter, friend of St Teresa of Avila (9) 4. They may be sacrificed on the altar (Ex 20) (4) 5. Feel the longing (5) 6. I’d open and had a viewpoint (6) 7. Part of the chain letter (4) 9. They contain the Precious Blood (5) 11. A vestment of protection (5) 12. The first paschal meal (Ex 12) (5,4) 13. Teacher of the faith (9) 17. Dalai Lama belongs here (5) 19. christ met disciples on the road to here (Lk 24) (6) 22. Become less intense (5) 23. It may top the coffin (4) 24. Do good to those who … you (Mt 5) (4) Solutions below

Crossword Solutions: ACROSS: 3 Holy souls, 8 Ugly, 9 Vexations, 10 Graven, 11 Anger, 14 Titan, 15 Dora, 16 Sprat, 18 Rare, 20 Issue, 21 Amman, 24 Health, 25 Panama hat, 26 Imps, 27 Plastered. DOWN: 1 Purgatory, 2 Alcantara, 4 Oxen, 5 Yearn, 6 Opined, 7 Link, 9 Veins, 11 Apron, 12 Roast lamb, 13 Catechist, 17 Tibet, 19 Emmaus, 22 Abate, 23 Pall, 24 Hate.

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1. In which country did St Martin de Porres live? a) Panama b) Paraguay c) Peru

Quiz Answers: 1.c) Peru; 2.b) 1818 (Bishop E B Slater, for the Cape of Good Hope); 3.a) gymnast Simone Biles; 4.a) Enoch; 5.b) Duns Scotus (who was a genius, but Protestants who disagreed with him corrupted his name to mean an incapacity to learn); 6.a) Cape Town; 7.a) Bing Crosby; 8.a) Cote d’Ivoire (at Yamoussoukro); 9.b) Benedict XV; 10. b) Matthew (6:33)

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Southern Cross Quiz

38 The Southern Cross

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Final Words Great Quotes by

GREAT SAINTS

History in Colour

A snapshot from the past, colourised exclusively for The Southern Cross

‘We are to love God for himself...nothing is more reasonable, nothing more profitable’ – St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

‘God is the Good, and all things which proceed from God are good.’

– St Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

‘Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.’

– St Augustine of Hippo (354-430)

‘Prayer is the oxygen of the soul’ – St Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968) ‘For me prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple look towards Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.’

– St Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-97)

‘There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.’

– Teresa of Avila (1515-82)

‘Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors to Christ.’

– St John Paul II (1920-2005)

‘Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills.’

– St Catherine of Siena (1347-80)

‘Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world.’

– St Óscar Romero (1917-80)

‘Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.’

– St Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

The

November 9 marks the 105th birthday of Archbishop Denis Hurley, seen here on the lap of his mother Theresa, with sister Eileen on the lap of father Denis Sr, an Irish-born lighthouse keeper then stationed at Robben Island, off Cape Town. Fr John Colgan — later an editor of The Southern Cross — baptised Denis on November 21, 1915 in St Mary’s cathedral, Cape Town. Younger brothers Jeremy and Christopher were yet to be born. Before too long, the family would move to Natal. Having matriculated from St Charles’ College in Pietermaritzburg, Hurley was ordained a priest in Rome in 1939.

In 1946 he became the world’s youngest bishop at 31 years of age. He would lead the archdiocese of Durban — and in many ways the Church in South Africa — until his retirement in 1992. Archbishop Hurley died at 89 on February 13, 2004.

The last laugh L

UCIFER’S YOUNG SON IS BORED as hell in hell. “Why don’t you go to earth and inflict evil on the people up there!” Satan suggests to his little devil.

Enthusiastically, the little devil takes his little shovel and digs his way up to the human world.

Arriving at the surface of earth, he finds himself in Texas.

“Howdy!” he shouts. “I’m the little devil with the little shovel and I will steal all your money!”

But far from being afraid, the Americans shrug: “Big deal. Take what you want, we have more than

enough money!”

Angry, the little devil grabs his shovel and furiously digs his way to Russia. “Privet!” he shrieks there.

“I’m the little devil with the little shovel and I will steal all your money!”

“Nichego,” the Russians laugh.

“Money? What money? We have none!”

Disappointed, the little devil continues to dig in anger and finally lands in Johannesburg: “Howzit!” he screams. “I’m the little devil with the little sho... Hey, who stole my damn shovel?”

Buy the Church Chuckles book of Catholic jokes!

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