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January 23 to January 29, 2013
Pope Benedict and the sacraments
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Bishop Dowling interview on Catholic schools
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Catholic schools’ matric pass rate 12% better than rest of SA BY CLAIRE MATHIESON
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ATHOLIC schools again exceeded the national average in the 2012 matric examinations, the Catholic Institute of Education (CIE) has said. But Catholic schools may not be complacent. “While the country improved its Grade 12 pass rate, which must be acknowledged and affirmed, and while Catholic schools do better than others, there is no place for complacency,” said Anne Baker, the Johannesburg-based CIE’s deputy director . In 2012, 106 Catholic schools wrote the National Senior Certificate. 78 of those schools wrote the state examinations and 28 the Independent Examination Board, which is usually written by private schools. Catholic schools which offer the IEB obtained a 99,4% pass rate. Of these, 85% obtained a bachelor pass. Only eight pupils nationally did not meet the requirements to pass matric. The overall pass rate for Catholic schools was 86,3%, marking 12,4% above the national pass rate of 73,9%, said Ms Baker. “Teachers and pupils are to be congratulated on these results, especially those whose hard work has borne fruit,” she said. The deputy director said that the CIE would be analysing the results to better
prepare schools in the year to come. “The quality of the passes must be examined and plans be made to enable pupils to achieve quality, not just quantity, in their passes.” She added that interest in education needs to come from all levels of society. The majority of Catholic children, she pointed out, do not have the privilege of attending Catholic schools and the Church needs to be just as concerned about these young people as it is about those who attend Catholic schools. “With approximately 50% of pupils dropping out of school—mostly in Grades 9, 10 and 11—it is obvious that there is a major problem in education,” Ms Baker said. “Further analysis of Grade 12 results shows a huge discrepancy between provinces and districts, largely based on economics. This continues to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots in our land, a social problem which leads to greater and greater youth unemployment,” she said. “In this Year of Faith we need to ask ourselves: what we can as a Church do to help,” said Ms Baker. She referred to Pope Benedict’s apostolic exhortation on the Second Synod of Bishops for Africa, Africae munus, which noted that Continued on page 3
Lance symbol of rotten world BY CAROL GLATz
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YCLIST Lance Armstrong’s admission to doping is just the tip of the iceberg, since high-stakes commercial interests pressure almost every professional cyclist into the illegal practice, said a Vatican official. “It’s a world that is rotten, all of cycling, even football,” said Mgr Melchor Sánchez de Toca Alameda, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture’s “Culture and Sport” section. Professional sports “have become a commodity that are subordinate to the free market and, therefore, to profit,” he said. Instead of sports being an activity that builds important values, respects human dignity and helps shape the whole human person, “it has reduced people to merchandise”. The monsignor’s comments came the same week Armstrong appeared on US television to admit that he had used performanceenhancing drugs throughout his career. Armstrong, who won the famed Tour de France for a record-breaking seven consecutive times, was stripped of his titles in 2012 after he was accused of using and distributing performance-enhancing drugs. He was also banned from professional cycling for life. Though he had denied doping, Armstrong never officially appealed the United States Anti-Doping Agency’s sanctions. Mgr Sánchez said that some pro-athletes who have confessed to doping also revealed the enormous pressure they felt to give everimproved performances; some said they felt it was physically impossible to fulfil such high expectations without the illicit boosts. The practice is especially rampant in cycling, he said, adding, “it’s very sad.” Pope Benedict recently condemned dop-
Lance Armstrong, pictured during his 2010 visit to Cape Town, has finally confessed his doping. (Photo: Mike Hutchings, Reuters/CNS) ing in sports and called on athletes, coaches and team owners to strive for victory through ethical and legal practices. In an effort to flex its moral muscle in the professional sports arena, the Vatican has invited top-tier Christian athletes to help bring ethical values back to a scandal-ridden world of sports. The Pontifical Council for Culture is planning to host an international conference on re-instilling values in sports this spring, inviting representatives from top world governing bodies like the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), the International Cycling Union and the Italian National Olympic Committee. The former-modern pentathlete-turnedpriest said the council also wants to hold a “Race of Faith”—a 100-metre jog, shuffle or sprint up the Via della Conciliazione towards St Peter’s Square during the gathering. “We want to see lots of cardinals in tracksuits, too,” he said.—CNS
Pope Benedict poses with Prince Albert II of Monaco and his South African wife, Princess Charlène, during a private audience at the Vatican. The former Charlene Wittstock, who represented South Africa as an Olympic swimmer, converted to Catholicism before marrying Prince Albert in 2011. She was instructed in Monaco by Fr Carlo Adams OSFS, formerly of Kakamas in the Northern Cape. (Photo: Vincenzo Pinto, Reuters/CNS)
Award for SA head of Vatican Radio’s English section STAFF REPORTER
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HE South African director of Vatican Radio English section will receive the the prestigious Daniel J Kane Religious Communications Award from the University of Dayton in Ohio for outstanding lifetime dedication to Gospel values using the mass media. Seàn Patrick Lovett, who was born in Cape Town and grew up in the city’s Pinelands suburb, will receive the award from the university’s Institute for Pastoral Initiatives on January 31. His talk at the ceremony will be recorded and posted online on February 1, at http://vcc.udayton.edu. “The Church is communication, because it is the ‘Word’. And the ‘Word’ is alive, dynamic and interactive by nature. So the Church will continue to use everything available to ensure it remains true to that nature,” Mr Lovett said. “My own experience at Vatican Radio over the past 35 years has taken me from recording programmes on magnetic tapes to uploading blogs on smartphone apps, from shortwave broadcasts to Internet podcasts. The ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ of Church communication hasn't changed much in 2 000 years—nor is it likely to. The ‘how’ is changing even as we speak, so it’s just as well we’re adaptable,” the lecturer in communication at Pontifical Gregorian University said. Mr Lovett—who describes himself as Irish by blood, African by birth and Italian by adoption—began working at Vatican Radio under Pope Paul VI in 1977. In the 1980s he helped establish a shortlived television station in 1982 which was sponsored by the US bishops through what is now Catholic News Service, and later served as a conflict correspondent in the 1980s in Lebanon, Northern Ireland and East Germany. He is the vice-president of the Centre de Recherché en Communication in Lyon, France, coordinating media and communi-
Seàn Patrick Lovett, the South African head of Vatican Radio’s English section, who will receive a communications prize in the US on January 31. cations workshops in Africa. His most recent programmes have been aimed at seminarians in non-verbal and effective communication, he told The Southern Cross in an interview in October. Mr Lovett said in the interview that it is important for Vatican Radio to have a place in the fast-paced world of social communications, without losing its identity. People today, he said, “know more than ever but we’ve never understood so little”. The likes of Vatican Radio can still help fill that void of understanding. He also worked with Mother Teresa to write The Best Gift is Love, a bestselling book of Bl Teresa’s meditations, and done voice-overs for dozens of films, cartoons and documentaries.—CNS