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YEAR REVIEW
The Southern Cross, December 15 to December 21, 2010
This was 2010 It was the year when South Africa hosted the football world as well as the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux, the clerical abuse scandal exploded again in several European countries, Pope Benedict was welcomed warmly in secular Britain and spoke on condoms, and Southern Africans responded generously to the suffering people of Haiti. GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER looks back at the year 2010. DECEMBER 2009 Missionaries for Africa Father Louis Blondel, 70, is murdered by robbers at his Diepsloot presbytery near Pretoria. He is the fourth Catholic priest to be murdered in South Africa in 2009. Ireland’s bishops apologise collectively for clerical abuse of children and agree to work with the government to set up mechanisms for handling allegations. Archbishop Mandla Paul Khumalo unexpectedly resigns as head of the archdiocese of Pretoria, and South Africa’s longest serving prelate, Bishop Erwin Hecht of Kimberley, retires at the age of 76. Three years after his excommunication, the former archbishop of Lusaka, Emmanuel Milingo is laicised. Pope Benedict declares Pope Pius XII venerable. Jewish groups protest. A woman knocks down Pope Benedict during the entry procession for the papal Midnight Mass at St Peter’s basilica. The pope is unharmed, but French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, suffers a broken hip in a fall during the incident.
JANUARY 2010 Cape Town’s archdiocesan St Francis Xavier seminary closes on January 1. The premises will be used by St Kizito’s orientation seminary, which relocates from Port Elizabeth. At least 37 Church workers were murdered in 2009, almost twice as many as in 2008. Auxiliary Bishop Barry Wood of Durban says it is important that lay Eucharistic ministers perform a solemn renewal of their special charism each liturgical year. The Vatican announces that in 2009, some 2,2 million people saw Pope Benedict at audiences and Angelus recitations. The capital of Haiti, Port-auPrince, is devastated by an earthquake on January 12. Among the more than 100 000 dead is the city’s archbishop Joseph Miot. Within a week, the Catholic Church in Southern Africa raises
R380 000 for Haiti, and more than a million in a month. Final figures exceed 2 million. South Africa’s Catholic schools achieved a matric pass rate of 83,9% in 2009, exceeding the national average by 23,6%. Catholic school students writing Independent Examination Board papers had a pass rate of 99,8%. Petronilla Chikambi Samuriwo, 42, former editor of Catholic Church News in Zimbabwe, dies on January 7 after a short illness. Pope Benedict visits Rome’s main synagogue, laying a wreath at a memorial to the city’s Jewish Nazi victims. Bishop Joseph Sandri is installed as head of the diocese of Witbank. Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot Pope John Paul II in May 1981, is released from a Turkish jail. He promptly proclaims himself “the Christ eternal”. Pope Benedict appoints Flaminia Giovanelli undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the first woman to serve a pontifical council in that position in more than two decades. Archbishop Ignatius Kaigama of Jos, Nigeria, says that violence between Muslims and Christians in his region, which killed more than 200 in January, must be attributed to politics, not religion. Fr João Noé Rodrigues of Witbank is appointed bishop of Tzaneen, succeeding Bishop Hugh Slattery. He is installed in March.
FEBRUARY Archbishop Stephen Brislin, former bishop of Kroonstad, is installed as head of the archdiocese of Cape Town on February 7. In the aftermath of revelations that President Jacob Zuma has fathered a child in an adulterous affair, the Southern African bishops issue a statement, signed by Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, calling on political leaders to be worthy role models to young South Africans. Meeting with Ireland’s bishops, Pope Benedict calls sexual
abuse of children by priests a “heinous crime”. Rosemary Goldie, 94, the first woman to hold a senior position in the Vatican when she was appointed undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity in 1966, dies in Australia on February 27.
MARCH As the sexual abuse scandal hits Germany, the country’s bishops ask for forgiveness from victims of sexual abuse at Churchrun schools. Comboni Father Vincent Mkhabela is drugged and hijacked in Pretoria. Leading an anti-abortion march in Johannesburg, Archbishop Buti Tlhagale says that lawmakers had been “binning God” and that their hands “are dripping with blood”. The SACBC launches its Church on the Ball website in preparation of the football World Cup in June and July. Catholics in El Salvador observe the 30th anniversary of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. The guard of the Love of Christ Ministries home for children, Macson Makado, is killed after being repeatedly shot from close range by a paintball gun. In a pastoral letter to Ireland’s Catholics, Pope Benedict says he understands the anger over sexual abuse by Church personnel. At the request of the bishops of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Vatican establishes a commission to study the reported Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate accept a request from Bishop Xolelo Kumalo to take over the running of the Marian shrine at Ngome. Referring to the abuse scandal in his homily at Johannesburg’s Chrism Mass, Archbishop Tlhagale says that all priests must take collective responsibility for the suffering, hurt and scandal inflicted by their clerical brothers in Europe and America.
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A woman prays the rosary during a Mass in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the devastating January 12 earthquake. (Photo: Eduardo Munoz, Reuters/CNS)
APRIL The Southern Cross launches its digital edition. The Turin Shroud goes on public display for six weeks, for the first time since 2000. Pope Benedict visits it in May. Poland’s military Archbishop Tadeusz Ploski and several priests are among those who perish in the plane crash that kills President Lech Kaczynski on April 10. Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube, former head of Bulawayo diocese, denies rumours that he is planning to head a political party. Visiting Malta, Pope Benedict meets with abuse survivors, walks in the footsteps of St Paul and encourages local Catholics to keep the faith. Marking 16 years of democracy in South Africa, Auxiliary Bishop Barry Wood of Durban says that the country is still “making many mistakes, just as teenagers are making mistakes when they are looking for maturity”. Couples for Christ celebrate their tenth anniversary of activity in South Africa. Pope Benedict promises action on the abuse scandal, while Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy says that in the abuse scandal, the Church is “on the side of the victims”. Former Grand Knight of da Gama and leading jurist Trevor Blunden dies on April 23 at 85. The Vatican approves the new English translations for the new Roman Missal, with only some local adaptations still pending. It will be fully implemented as of Advent 2011, the SACBC says.
MAY The Oberammergau Passion Play begins its five-month run of performances, the first since 2000. Pope Benedict says that the ongoing global economic crisis shows that the free market is not capable of regulating itself in a way that promotes the common good. The Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office commends health minister Aaron Motsoaledi’s new HIV/Aids policy. Pope Benedict visits Portugal, with events at the Marian shrine of Fatima taking centrestage. On the flight to Portugal, he says that the abuse crisis came from within the Church and not from an outside attack. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna says former Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Angelo Sodano blocked an investigation in the 1990s into the sexual abuse committed by the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer. Archbishop Tlhagale accuses the government and many South Africans of complicity in human trafficking because they fail to do enough to tackle modern slavery. Singer Lena Horne, a Catholic, dies on May 9 at 92. Bishop Kevin Dowling is elected co-president of the Catholic peace movement Pax Christi International. Pope Benedict says that microfinancing, small-scale develop-
ment and better education can help pull African communities out of poverty. Paddy Kearney receives the Andrew Murray-Desmond Tutu Prize for best Christian/theology book for his biography of Archbishop Denis Hurley, Guardian of the Light. Centenarian Holy Cross Sister Theodata Pubec, who once taught Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, dies on May 17 at 103. Just eleven days later, another Holy Cross centenarian, Sr Paschal Halmansegger, dies at 102 in Aliwal North. US President Barack Obama went to Catholic Mass for three years and had his first exposure to organised religion through the Church, political analyst Patrick Whelan reveals. Archbishop Tlhagale hands over a fully-equipped police car to the South African Police Services, bought with money raised in the archdiocese of Johannesburg in remembrance of Fr Lionel Sham, who was murdered in 2009.
JUNE Parishes throughout South Africa celebrate World Cup Sunday, with some officially welcoming Catholic football fans from around the world. To coincide with the World Cup, the Damietta Peace Initiative and Caritas stage a Peace Cup in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, in which 26 teams representing different immigrant nationalities compete. Bishop Luigi Padovese, 63, vicar-apostolic of Anatolia (Turkey), is stabbed to death by his driver on June 3. The Southern Cross is listed as one of Marketing Mix magazine’s Top Print Performers of 2009, based on Audit Bureau of Circulation figures. Any form of compulsory military service would be unacceptable in post-apartheid South Africa, says Fr Mike Deeb OP, head of the SACBC’s Justice & Peace Commission, after the idea of the reintroduction of conscription is raised by defence minister Lindiwe Sisulu. Fr Frank de Gouveia of Cape Town is appointed bishop of Oudtshoorn, succeeding Bishop Edward Adams. He is installed on July 27. Pope Benedict visits Cyprus, accompanied much of the time by the island’s Orthodox head, Archbishop Chrysostomos II. Fr Monwabisi Majingolo survives being shot through the head in a hijacking. Two men are arrested. Slain Polish anti-communist priest Fr Jerzy Popieluszko is beatified in Warsaw, almost 26 years after his murder. It is reported that the climax of the six-season TV thriller Lost, broadcast in the United States in late May, was filmed in a Catholic school in Honolulu, Hawaii. Archbishop Tlhagale, as SACBC president, appeals to President Jacob Zuma to intervene in the political crisis in Swaziland, which forms part of the conference’s territory, after anti-monarchy activist Sipho Jele died in police custody in May. Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney makes headlines in Britain after being seen