5000 Times to be Thankful
The publication of our 5000th edition this week marks a significant milestone for this independent and entirely unsubsidised newspaper. For almost 96 years—from its first issue on October 16, 1920 onwards — The Southern Cross has appeared every single week, without fail.
For an independent national weekly newspaper in South Africa, this might well be an unparalleled record; it certainly is for a religious weekly. For this, the glory is God’s.
It is an accomplishment for our region’s relatively small Catholic community that it has sustained a weekly newspaper for so long, something which no other Christian denomination has been able to do.
Over the past 96 years, more than 54 million copies of The Southern Cross have been sold. At an estimated average of 4,5 readers per copy, that means the newspaper has been read at least 250 million times.
For many Catholics, The Southern Cross has been and remains an important source of Catholic formation. It can be said that nobody ever became a worse Catholic for reading The Southern Cross.
The newspaper’s influence on and contribution to the local Church has been immense. For example, The Southern Cross was instrumental in the bishops’ campaign to save the Catholic schooling system from obliteration by the apartheid regime in the late 1950s.
In the 1960s, The Southern Cross was the primary source of information about Vatican II, aided by exclusive (and anonymous) articles by Archbishop Denis Hurley.
A more recent example: The Southern Cross played an important role in making known the cause for Bl Benedict Daswa, culminating in his beatification in 2015.
This present issue, in which we look back and also ahead, serves as a tribute to all those who for almost a century have kept The Southern Cross going as an integral part of Catholic life in our region.
This 5000th edition honours the editors of the past, names like Kelly, Morris, Colgan, McCann, Stubbs, De Beer, Connor and Shackleton; and their lay editors — the men who did the all heavy lifting — like Rowntree, Murray and Donnelly.
This 5000th edition honours successive business managers — not least the current incumbent, Pamela Davids, who has given 43 years to the newspaper so far — and their loyal staff, some of whom have given decades of their lives to keep the operation going, week after week.
This 5000th edition honours the many contributors and columnists over the decades, some long-serving, with names like Kolbe, Singleton, Coker, Duffy, Hatton, Hurley, Whittle, Hinwood, Williams, King, Duval, Bruyns, Cowan, Ntabeni, Rowland, Ngara and countless others.
This 5000th edition honours the successive boards of directors whose prudent fiscal management has kept The Southern Cross afloat in often choppy waters: names like Peart, Drew, Coates, Robertson, Pothier, Houghton, Hurly, Lack, Jordan, Moerdyk — and present chair, Rosanne Shields, the third generation of Pothiers to serve on the board.
This 5000th edition honours our loyal advertisers through the ages. Most find good value in using The Southern Cross as a medium for their marketing; others have advertised as a way of supporting The Southern Cross financially.
The support of our advertisers helps keep The Southern Cross alive, as do the contributions of our readers to the Associates Campaign, whose generosity has helped The Southern Cross survive.
This 5000th edition honours the many people who over nearly ten decades have helped get The Southern Cross into the hands of their fellow parishioners — those who handle the parcels as they arrive, pin up the posters, sell the newspaper at the church door, and so on.
Their invaluable and crucial contribution to the social communications apostolate is represented in this edition by the photos of Dawn Nortje on the front-page selling The Southern Cross in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago, and on page 7 of the unnamed men selling the newspaper in Durban in 1928.
And, above all, this 5000th edition honours our loyal readers, many of whom are always ready with an encouraging word. It is a reflection of the love which The Southern Cross inspires that many readers choose to assist the newspaper financially through the Associates Campaign.
For a newspaper like The Southern Cross, that is the greatest reward: to know that it has resided in the hearts of its readers, for 5000 successive weeks.
- The Look of Christ - May 24, 2022
- Putting Down a Sleeping Toddler at Communion? - March 30, 2022
- To See Our Good News - March 23, 2022