Year-end Review 1999
January
Fr Buti Tlhagale, secretary-general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, is appointed archbishop of Bloemfontein.
Pope John Paul visits Mexico and the US city of St Louis. The US operator of an Internet pornography site is ordered to withdraw his coverage of Pope John Paul’s visit to St Louis.
The Ekwaluseni Catholic Intermediate School in Vrede, Free State, is voted the best of 2,000 schools participating in the Miracles for Education campaign.
The Vatican promulgates a new rite on exorcism.
Bishop George Murry, auxiliary in Chicago, on his visit to South Africa tells the local bishops that black people in South Africa and the US were facing the same challenges.
A month after India’s prime minister Atal Vajpajee apologised for fundamentalist Hindu attacks on Christians, Australian evangelist Graham Stuart Baines and his two children are burnt to death by a mob in Orissa state. A month later, two Christian youths are murdered and a nun is gang-raped in the same state.
The archbishop of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and four missionaries escape from their rebel captors.
February
Fr Albert Pelemann OSB, 74, is murdered by robbers at Vrederust mission near Pietersburg.
The Vatican announces that the number of Catholics world-wide now exceeds one billion. The Catholic Church remains the world’s largest religion.
In a televised address, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe makes a thinly veiled threat against Michael Auret, chairman of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.
A Swiss-based Christian human rights group buys the freedom of 1050 mostly child slaves in Sudan at R300 per head.
Swiss-born Bishop Alois Haene, 88, of Gweru, Zimbabwe, dies on February 19.
March
Pope John Paul waives the usual five-year waiting period for investigating the sainthood cause of Mother Teresa, with rumours that she might be beatified in 2000.
Bishop Dominic Khumalo, auxiliary in Durban, resigns on reaching the retirement age of 75.
Archbishop-elect Buti Tlhagale of Bloemfontein in “an open letter to men and women of goodwill” calls on communities to express their outrage at criminal violence.
Iranian president Mohammad Khatami meets Pope John Paul during a groundbreaking visit to the Vatican.
Pope John Paul hits the music charts with his CD Abbà Pater, a recording of the pope praying and speaking to the background of contemporary music.
A former Johannesburg priest, Fr Luc Matthys, is appointed bishop of Armidale, Australia, while Johannesburg-born Sr Mark Cornelius is elected head of the Little Company of Mary worldwide.
French philosopher Jean Guitton, 91, a leading lay voice in Vatican II, dies in Paris on March 21.
Northern Irish Catholic human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson is assassinated by a car bomb.
April
The Catholic Institute of Education launches an investment share scheme to safeguard the quality of Catholic education.
Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the Marist Brothers’ schools, is canonised.
The newly-founded African Catholic Priests’ Solidarity Movement accuses the South African clergy of being divided along racial lines, calling for a greater commitment towards inculturation.
As the conflict in Kosovo reaches its climax, Catholics in the region are escaping the most brutal treatment by Serb forces, according to the Vatican news agency Fides.
American assisted suicide activist Dr Jack Kervorkian is convicted of second degree murder.
Lakela Kaunda, a Catholic, becomes the first black woman editor of a mass circulation daily, Port Elizabeth’s The Evening Post.
May
Padre Pio is beatified in before 600,000 pilgrims in St Peter’s Square.
The SACBC issues its pastoral statement on economic justice, calling, among others, for tax cuts for low and middle income earners.
The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission reaches a groundbreaking understanding on the primacy of the pope and episcopal collegiality.
Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Bloemfontein is named chancellor of South Africa’s first Catholic university, St Augustine College.
The Vatican announces details on the new special Mass for the Jubilee Year 2000.
A new lay movement, the Steering Committee of the Pastoral Forum, is initiated to enable the laity to participate in decision-making at SACBC level.
Pope John Paul makes a historic but low-key visit to Romania, his first to a predominantly Orthodox country.
The remains of Fr Raphael Sibisi of Mariannhill are found in his overturned car near Umzumbe. He went missing on January 21.
Terrorists abduct 120 people attending mass in Calì, Colombia.
Polish police remove 300 crosses, which had offended Jewish groups, from Auschwitz concentration camp. Catholic protesters threaten to blow up the area in retaliation.
June
Pope John Paul tours his homeland Poland on a 13-day visit.
In one of his last acts as president, Nelson Mandela awards Archbishop Denis Hurley and others South Africa’s highest civilian honour, the Order for Meritorious Service Class I.
Archbishop Wilfrid Napier of Durban says that the ANC landslide victory in the June 6 elections could be a good thing, provided it led to the improvement of life for the majority of people.
Fr Smangaliso Mkhatshwa is reappointed as deputy minister of education.
The South African-born founder of the Association of Hebrew Catholics, Carmelite Father Elias Friedmann, 83, dies on June 11 in Haifa, Israel.
English Cardinal Basil George Hume of Westminster dies of cancer on June 17, weeks after being the first Catholic to be awarded the rare Order of Merit by Queen Elizabeth.
Thirty-one pilgrims die in a truck crash in Madagascar as they returned from a religious festival.
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano condemns the inflated salaries of sports stars following the world record transfer to Inter Milan by football striker Christian Vieri, who earned millions of dollars in the deal.
Pope John Paul approves the last document needed to clear the way for the beatification of two of the three Portuguese children who saw the Blessed Virgin at Fatima in 1917 (the third child is still alive).
July
The archdiocese of Durban celebrates the diamond jubilee of the priestly ordination of their former archbishop, Denis Hurley OMI.
Sr Bridget Edman, a Carmelite nun in Cape Town, wins a world-wide playwright competition held by the Vatican for her play on St Thérèse of Lisieux and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
July 9, earmarked as the day the world would end according to certain interpretations of Nostradamus’ predictions, passes unnoticed. Doomsday also fails to occur on an alternative date, August 11.
The Vatican bars Americans Fr Robert Nugent and Sr Jeannine Gramick from “any pastoral work involving homosexual persons.”
Fr Boniface Mashiane of Potgietersrus announces his intentions to appeal against his conviction for armed robbery. Members of his parish told TV reporters that “justice has not been done” in the case.
The appointment of Fr Raphael Mahlangu as rector of St Peter’s Seminary in Garsfontein, Pretoria, is approved by the Holy See.
St Anthony of Padua is voted the most popular saint in a poll run by The Tablet, diocesan newspaper of Brooklyn in New York.
August
A conman who ripped off Randfontein parish and others, is caught following information published in the The Southern Cross.
A fire at St John Vianney seminary in Pretoria causes extensive damage.
Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli presents the pope with his recording of the official Holy Year 2000 hymn.
Archbishop Wilfrid Napier of Durban says he believes that former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok and 15 others who confessed before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they bombed the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, might have been behind 1988’s bombing of Khotso House, the SACBC’s headquarters.
South African-born Fr Cyril Axelrod CSsR is awarded the highest honour given by the World Federation of the Deaf.
The archdiocesan newspaper of Mexico City, Nuevo Criterio, describes the new Star Wars movie Episode 1–The Phantom Menace as a “parody of scriptures.”
Fr Bernard F Connor, 60, editor of The Southern Cross from 1992 to 1995, dies of leukaemia in Pietermaritzburg on August 25.
Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara, 90, world famous defender of human rights, dies on August 27.
September
Bishop Carlos Belo flees East Timor following an attack on his residence by pro-Indonesia militia in the wake of a pro-independence vote on August 30.
Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo, addressing a memorial mass for the Joshua Nkomo attended by Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, criticises Zimbabwe’s poverty and involvement in the Congo war.
Colombian Bishop José de Jesus Quintero Diaz is released after being kidnapped by terrorists in August.
Pathologists confirm that the relics of St Luke in Padua, Italy, are authentic.
October
The book Hitler’s Pope by John Cornwell, which accuses Pope Pius XII of tolerating the Nazi Holocaust and of anti-Semitism, is published. The Vatican comments that Cornwell has exaggerated the depth of his research.
The three killers of Sr Theodelind Schreck, who was murdered in a robbery near Eshowe in July 1998, receive lengthy jail sentences, including one life sentence.
Bishop Belo returns to East Timor amid scenes of devastation as pro-Indonesian militias retreat.
President Thabo Mbeki, parliamentarians and religious leaders attend a memorial service for Tanzanian ex-president Julius Nyerere, a committed Catholic, at Cape Town’s St Mary’s cathedral.
Rwandan Bishop Augustin Misago, on trial for genocide, says that he is a victim of a Tutsi campaign to undermine the reputation of the Catholic Church.
Fr Daniel Corijn will replace fellow OMI Father Paul Decock as president of St Joseph’s Theological Institute in Cedara next year, it is announced.
The SACBC announces the establishment of its national Aids office.
A Welsh priest, found guilty of 14 charges of sexual assault, is dismissed from the priesthood by papal decree.
Catholic author Morris West, 83, dies in Sidney, Australia.
Christians in Pakistan welcome the coup against the government of Nawaz Sharif.
South Africa’s St Vincent de Paul Society decides to keep its membership exclusively Catholic, except in cases of non-Catholic spouses.
The cornerstone for a controversial mosque adjacent to the church of the Annunciation in Nazareth is laid, eliciting protest by Christians in the Holy Land and the Vatican.
Lutherans and Catholics sign the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” in Augsburg, Germany, on October 31, marking the resolution of a central doctrinal dispute.
November
Pope John Paul visits India, to present his apostolic exhortation stemming from last year’s Synod for Asia, and Georgia, his first visit to a former Soviet republic.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II says that the pope is not welcome in Russia.
A Sudanese delegation, which includes three bishops, briefs South African Catholics and government ministers on the brutal persecution of Christians and animists by Sudan’s Islamic regime.
An inter-faith gathering of 230 religious representatives ends at the Vatican.
Police arrest a suspect in connection with the murder in an apparent hijacking attempt of Fr Solomon Doncabe, 36, of St Wendelin’s parish in Mariannhill.
Amid concerns that China is stepping up persecution of the Catholic underground Church, which is loyal to the Holy See, Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo is indefinitely detained.
As expectations for a Holy Year beatification of Pope John XXIII increase, the Vatican says that the cause for Pius XII was not sufficiently advanced for a simultaneous beatification.
Three Tanzanian priests, including the provincial of the Consolata Fathers in South Africa, and a catechist are killed in a car crash in Delmas, Gauteng.
Most of the 19 Ugandan seminarians abducted two years ago by rebels had died either of illness or in battle, it is reported.
More than 40 people seeking refuge in a Sri Lankan Marian shrine are killed during shelling in the conflict between Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army.
December
The Parliament of the World ’s Religions meets for a week in Cape Town.
Mass goers at a London church flee in panic as a naked man wielding a sword bursts in and attacks members of the congregation, injuring 11.
Enrolments in South Africa’s Catholic schools have increased despite hikes in tuition fees due to drastic subsidy cuts, according to the Catholic Institute of Education.
In an interview with The Southern Cross, controversial theologian Fr Hans Küng argues that the Church is in urgent need of a major overhaul.
The Missionary Sisters of the Assumption celebrate 150 years of ministry in South Africa.
The Jubilee Year 2000 officially kicks off on Christmas Eve.
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