This Was 2018: The Highlights and Lowlights of the Church Year

It was a difficult year for the Catholic Church, with the abuse scandal re-emerging and division within the Church deepening. But there were bright spots, such as the 200th anniversary of the Catholic Church’s establishment in South Africa, the synod on youth, the canonisation of Ss Oscar Romero and Paul VI. In South Africa, it was the year when the era of President Jacob Zuma ended but the disease of corruption remained. GÜNTHER SIMMERMACHER looks back at 2018.

DECEMBER 2017

• Catholics from across Southern Africa take part in the second Mini-World Youth Day, held in Durban.
• Burglars break into the Schoenstatt shrine in Bedfordview, Johannesburg, steal the tabernacle, with consecrated hosts inside, and break two statues.
• Archbishop Stephen Brislin of Cape Town, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference, points out that though the Catholic Church cannot be “an alternative political party”, the bishops could have done more to be politically engaged in the face of poor state governance.
• Ignoring international law, US President Donald Trump recognises Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The move is widely condemned by the international community, including the Vatican.
• The Vatican issues an instruction that only relics certified as authentic can be exposed for veneration.
• Cardinal Bernard Law, who was at the centre of the scandal of abuse cover-ups in Boston in 2002, dies at 86 in exile in Rome on December 20.
• Jesuit Father Ted Rogers, who was hugely influential in Zimbabwe, dies at 93 on December 30 in England, just week’s after the publication of his book Missionary Martyrs in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe:1976-88.

JANUARY 2018

• The Vatican reports that 23 Church workers — 13 priests, two religious and eight lay persons—were violently killed in 2017; mostly in robberies.
• Catholic schools again outperformed the national matric pass rate, at 84,1% to 74,6%. Private Catholic schools attained a pass rate of 99%. Inkamana St Benedict’s School, Vryheid, and Springfield Dominican Convent, Cape Town, placed second and third in the rankings of South Africa’s best schools published in The Star.
• Masses in Zambia are cancelled due to a cholera epidemic.
• During a Mass in Gaza, Archbishop Brislin tells parishioners not to lose hope. He was taking part in the annual Holy Land Coordination solidarity visit to the Holy Land by bishops from several countries.
• Fr Lerato Mokoena of Bethlehem, Free State, dies on January 15 after a collision with a bus. He had been a priest for only 15 months.
• Visiting Chile and Peru, Pope Francis asks for forgiveness from those who were sexually abused by priests.
• In his annual message for World Communications Day, Pope Francis urges Catholics to ensure that they do not share fake news.
• The bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo condemn state violence against protesters in 95 parishes which left six dead and 127 injured.
• Addressing the bishops’ first plenary session for 2018, Archbishop Brislin apologises for the local Church’s historical failures during colonialism and apartheid, as well as for cases of sexual abuse by Church personnel.

FEBRUARY

• The Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office marks and protests the 21st anniversary of abortion becoming legal in South Africa with a Mass in Cape Town’s St Mary’s cathedral.
• Around 4000 Catholics participate in a Eucharistic procession through Cape Town as part of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Catholic Church’s establishment in South Africa.
• The SACBC’s Justice & Peace Commission distributes a 10-point plan of anti-racist actions for Lent.
• Welcoming the resignation of Jacob Zuma as South Africa’s president as “long overdue”, the SACBC expresses its hope that the government will return to the ideals of servant leadership which marked the early days of the country’s democratic dispensation.
• Tanzania’s bishops protested against the suppression of several constitutional freedoms within the country, saying the government is becoming responsible for threatening national unity.
• Witbank parishioners, led by Bishop Giuseppe Sandri, march in protest against human trafficking and to pray for its victims.
• Bishop Willem Christiaans is appointed the first locally-born head of Keetmanshoop, Namibia.
• Pope Francis declares February 23 a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Africa.
• Eight months after ordering priests in a Nigerian diocese to pledge their obedience to the pope and accept the bishop that now-retired Pope Benedict XVI had named for them, Pope Francis accepts the resignation of Bishop Peter Ebere Okpaleke.
• Sr Hermenegild Makoro CPS, secretary-general of the SACBC, is reappointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
• The bishops of Germany resolve to allow Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics, under certain circumstances. The decision is not binding on individual dioceses.
• Leading theologian Brian Gaybba, former advisor to the SACBC, dies after a long illness on February 25 in Grahamstown.
• Christian leaders in the Holy Land close the church of the Holy Sepulchre  for three days in protest against Jerusalem municipality’s plan to tax Church property, such as hotels and convention centres.

MARCH

• Pope Francis decrees that Latin-rite Catholics mark the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, on the Monday after Pentecost each year.
• Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch denounces as biased a statement by the World Council of Churches on the situation in Syria and says most Christians in the Middle East support the Assad government.
• The head of the Society of St Vincent de Paul worldwide, Br Renato Lima de Oliveira of Brazil, visits South Africa, Botswana and five other African countries.
• Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz, long-time president of the German bishops’ conference, dies on March 11 at the age of 81.
• St David’s College in Johannesburg launches an anti-bullying app.
• A Vatican tribunal finds Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Agana, Guam, guilty of two of five charges of sexual abuse.
• Pope Francis visits the shrine of St Pio of Pietrelcina at San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy.
• Fr John Paul Mwaniki is installed as the third — and first African–abbot of Inkamana Benedictine abbey in KwaZulu-Natal.
• Youths from all over the world meet at the Vatican in preparation for October’s Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment.
• In light of the drought in the Western Cape and other parts of Southern Africa, the SACBC issues a prayer for rain.
• Disgraced Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien dies on March 19 at the age of 80.
• Centenarian nun Sr Benedict Wurm, a King Williams Town Dominican, dies on March 26 at 105.

APRIL

• Fr David Rowan SJ, the Jesuit regional superior in South Africa, is elected the new president of the Leadership Conference of Consecrated Life in Southern Africa for a two-year term.
• It is revealed that Pope Francis has asked Cardinal Wilfrid Napier to continue serving indefinitely as archbishop of Durban, two years after the cardinal submitted his canonically required resignation on reaching the age of 75.
• Pope Francis apologises for underestimating the seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis in Chile following an investigation into allegations of cover-ups by Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, whom the pope had strongly defended. In a meeting with Chilean abuse survivors the pope expresses his contrition for having doubted their allegations.
• At a celebration in Magaliesburg of the local Church’s bicentenary, Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg warns against a revisionism that sees missionaries as having been in cahoots with colonialists, but acknowledges that their “civilising mission” was sometimes “defective”.

MAY

• The three South African  provinces of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate officially amalgamate, with Fr Neil Frank OMI as the united body’s first provincial.
• Nigeria’s bishops tell President Muhammadu Buhari to resign if he cannot stop the killing of innocent Nigerians by ethnic Fulani militias in the country’s north-east.
• After 17 years, Fr Emil Blaser OP hangs up the microphone on his Radio Veritas morning show “Matins”.
• Some 100 000 members of the Neocatechumenal Way from more than 130 countries, including a group of 180 South African pilgrims, celebrate the 50th anniversary of the movement founding with Pope Francis in Rome.
• The SACBC Justice & Peace Commission  appoints legal counsel to demand compensation for former coalminers who contracted deadly lung diseases in the mines.
• Little Eden Homes celebrate the centenary of co-founder Domitilla Rota Hyams’s birth with a Mass at St Therese church in Edenvale, Johannesburg.
• The electorate of the Republic of Ireland votes to overturn the country’s ban on abortion by 66,4%.
• The Society of Missionaries of Africa—popularly called the White Fathers due to the colour of their cloaks—marks the 150th anniversary of its foundation by Cardinal Charles Levigerie.
• Long-time SACBC administration employee Clifford Kgatle dies on May 6 at the age of 58.
• Condemning an attack on a mosque in Verulam, KwaZulu-Natal, in which a man was killed and another two injured, the Catholic bishops of Southern Africa say that those who sow religious conflict must not succeed. The SACBC also condemns a mosque attack in Malmesbury, Western Cape, in June.
• The Vatican releases an instruction, “Cor Orans”, with new norms for contemplative orders of nuns, encouraging cooperation among their monasteries and outlining procedures for communities left with only a few members.
• After a meeting with Pope Francis, all 34 active bishops of Chile offer their resignation over the abuse scandal. Eventually, Pope Francis accepts seven of these resignations.
• Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, Australia, is convicted of failing to inform police about child sexual abuse allegations. He later resigns. His conviction is overturned on appeal in December.
• Wim Wenders’ critically acclaimed documentary Pope Francis: A Man of His Word premieres at the Cannes Film Festival. Distributors don’t release the film in South Africa.
• Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, a longtime Vatican official, dies on May 18 in Rome at the age of 88.
• The Catholic Business Forum, a lay initiative to support members in their professions and foster ethics and social responsibility, is founded.
• Veteran Southern Cross columnist Mphuthumi Ntabeni publishes his debut novel, The Broken River Tent.
• Pope Francis names Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser as apostolic visitor to Medjugorje.
• Cardinal Reinhard Marx, chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, visits South Africa as part of “Courageous Conversations”, convened by Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town.

JUNE

• Masses are held throughout the country to celebrate the bicentenary of the Church in South Africa, with the archdiocese of Cape Town concluding the jubilee year with a closing Mass at the Bellville Velodrome on June 24.
• Fr Ron Rolheiser, whose weekly column appears in The Southern Cross, visits South Africa briefly to deliver a public lecture at the annual meeting of the international  Association of Oblate Institutes of Higher Learning, held this year at St Joseph’s Theological Institute in Cedara, KwaZulu-Natal.
• Nicaraguan Cardinal Miguel Obando Bravo, retired archbishop of Managua and once hailed as his nation’s “father of peace and reconciliation”, dies on June 3 at  92.
• It is announced that next year’s international Taizé Pilgrimage of Trust on Earth for young adults will be held in Cape Town from September 25-29.
• Catholic runner Bongmusa Mthembu, clutching his rosary, wins the Comrades Marathon for a third time, after 2014 and 2017.
• A new law will require Catholic priests in Canberra, Australia, to break the seal of confession to report child abusers.
• Fr Colin Bowes, vicar-general of De Aar and its diocesan exorcist, reportedly presides over the healing of a disabled woman during a Catholic Charismatic Renewal conference in Portugal.
• Pope Francis creates 14 new cardinals.
• Bishops criticise the anti-Catholic Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte after he called God “stupid”.
• Pope Francis makes a one-day ecumenical pilgrimage to Geneva to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the World Council of Churches.
• US priest Fr Brian Massingale delivers the Winter Theology 2018 lecture series on “Racial Justice and the Demands of Discipleship”.

JULY

• Bishop Frank De Gouveia of Oudtshoorn resigns for health reasons. Vicar-general Fr John Atkinson is appointed interim administrator of the diocese.
• The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission publishes its first document in 13 years on how both institutions can learn from each other in the exercise of ecclesial authority.
• French Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, former head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, dies on July 5 at 75.
• The Association of Catholic Tertiary Students (ACTS) celebrates the 25th anniversary of its founding with a Mass at St John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria during its annual conference.
• Pope Francis hosts an ecumenical prayer meeting which also includes Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, in Bari, Italy, to affirm the Church’s solidarity with persecuted Christians in the Middle East.
• The Society of St Pius X, a canonically irregular priestly society, elects Fr Davide Pagliarani, 47, as its superior-general to succeed Bishop Bernard Fellay.
• The first congress in South Africa of the Pan-African Secular Franciscan Order and Franciscan Youth is held at Padre Pio Spirituality Centre in Pretoria.
• The bishops of Southern Africa condemn a spate of taxi industry-related killings, calling on the government to act.
• The Latin Catholic patriarchate of Jerusalem strongly criticises Israel’s new law that defines the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people for failing to provide constitutional guarantees for the rights of indigenous people and other minorities in the country.

AUGUST

• Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of Mthatha is elected new president of the SACBC, to succeed Archbishop Brislin in early 2019. Bishops Dabula Mpako of Queenstown and Graham Rose of Dundee will serve as first and second vice-presidents.
• SACBC president Archbishop Brislin calls for the development of a media strategy for the local Church, with the help of professional journalists.
• The bishops of Southern Africa approve the process of the sainthood cause for Benedictine Sister Reinolda May whose visions of the Virgin Mary are the source of devotion at the shrine of Ngome in Eshowe diocese.
• Pope Francis accepts the resignation from the College of Cardinals of disgraced US Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, 88.
• Pope Francis revises the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that capital punishment is morally never admissible.
• The HIV/Aids pandemic is far from over, and churches must continue to play a critical role in combating the disease, the International HIV/Aids Conference in Amsterdam hears.
• Psychotherapist and former US priest Richard Sipe, whose research exposed the extent of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up in the US Catholic Church, dies on August 8 at the age of 85.
• Canadian Father James Mallon visits South Africa to present “Divine Renovation” conferences in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.
• The Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra performs in Soweto’s Regina Mundi church to mark the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth.
• Fr Thwalikhaya Innocent Mandondo of Mthatha dies in a car crash when his car overturns. He was 31.
• Responding to the devastating Pennsylvania grand jury report, Pope Francis issues a letter acknowledging “with shame and repentance” the Catholic Church’s failure to act on sexual abuse by clerics.
• An SACBC pastoral statement on the land issue says there is “no such thing as the absolute ownership of land” and in land distribution, “priority has to be given to the poor and the landless”.
• Thousands of people from all over the world take part in the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Ireland.
• The Southern Cross hosts a pilgrimage to Ireland, led by Bishop Victor Phalana of Klerksdorp.
• Celebrating Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, Pope Francis solemnly asks forgiveness for the thousands of cases of sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by Catholics in Ireland.
• Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former nuncio to the US, issues a statement in which he claims that Pope Francis overturned sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI on Archbishop McCarrick, and calls on the pope to resign. Archbishop Viganò later withdraws the call for a papal resignation after his claim is proven to be untrue.

SEPTEMBER

• The Union of Catholic African Press holds its conference in Cape Town.
• Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Johannesburg condemns recent attacks on foreign nationals by “well-dressed looters”.
• 16-year-old peasant girl Anna Kolaserova is beatified as a martyr in Slovakia, seven decades after she was shot in front of her family for resisting rape by a Soviet soldier.
• The archdiocese of Johannesburg has laid the foundations for the sainthood cause of Domitilla and Daniel Hyams, founders of Little Eden.
• A report commissioned by the Church in Germany documents nearly 3700 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, deacons and clergy over a 68-year period.
• St Joseph’s Theological Institute in Cedara celebrates the 75th anniversary of its foundation and appoints Fr Father Ewen Swartz OMI as its new president.
• The Catholic Bible Foundation of South Africa marks its 25th anniversary.
• China and the Vatican reach a provisional agreement over the appointment of bishops.
• Edna Molewa, minister of environmental affairs and a Catholic, dies on September 22. Her state funeral is held in Pretoria’s Sacred Heart cathedral on October 6.
• Police charge Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, India, with the rape of a nun.
• Pope Francis travels to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to visit important Marian shrines and places commemorating the nations’ fight for freedom, and a monument to Jewish victims of the Nazis in Vilnius.
• Seven robbers besiege the Stigmatine House in Pretoria, shooting Fr Sylvester Motlhokoa CSS in the thigh and through the foot, and attacking seminarian Nduduzo Jali with stones.

OCTOBER

• The Synod of Bishops on Youth takes place over three weeks in the Vatican. Representing the SACBC are Cardinal Wilfrid Napier and Bishops Stanislaw Dziuba and Siegfried Jwara.
• The October edition of Women Church World, published in conjunction with the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, calls on Catholic women to make their voices heard in confronting the crisis of the Church.
• Dr Nontando Hadebe, who lectures in theology at St Augustine College in Johannesburg, and Radio Veritas presenter Sheila Pires take prominent roles in the Catholic Women Speak symposium in Rome.
• A delegation of Justice & Peace activists, led by Bishop Phalana of Klerksdorp, presents its “Tavern Project” in North West province to the United Nations in New York.
• Pope Francis defrocks Fernando Karadima, the influential Chilean priest who gained notoriety for sexually abusing young men in his parish. Shortly after, he laicises two retired Chilean bishops over abuses.
• Allegations by William Segodisho of Johannesburg that as a teenager he was abused by English Jesuit Father Bill MacCurtain in the late 1980s are acknowledged to be factual.
• North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un asks South Korean President Moon Jae-in to pass on an invitation for a visit to Pope Francis.
• Pope Francis canonises Archbishop Oscar Romero and Pope Paul VI, as well as Bls Francesco Spinelli, Maria Katharina Kasper and Nazaria Ignacia.
• Cameroon’s bishops complain of irregularities during elections in the country’s conflict-torn English- speaking areas after a seminarian is killed by government troops outside a church.
• The Russian Orthodox Church severs ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
• The National Church Leaders’ Consultation, of which the Catholic Church is a member, condemns corruption and calls for events that will “soak the [2019] electoral season in prayer”.
• A judge in El Salvador orders the arrest of Alvaro Rafael Saravia, the assassin of St Oscar Romero.
• Pakistan’s supreme court sets aside the death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Catholic convicted of “blasphemy”, and orders her release from prison.
• Archbishop Tlhagale calls for the excommunication of abuser priests, saying the halo of the priesthood is broken.
• Fr Sylvester David OMI of Durban is appointed president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, to take office in 2019.
• Trappist Father Thomas Keating, a pioneer in Centering Prayer, dies in the US on October 25 at 95.
• Fr Mzingaye Moyo of Keimoes-Upington dies at 42 on October 29, days after crashing into an unmarked stationary truck.

NOVEMBER

• A book of selected correspondence of Archbishop Denis Hurley titled A Life In Letters is launched.
• A civil court in Milan orders Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò to return 1,8 million euros plus interest and legal fees to his brother, Fr Lorenzo Viganò.
• It is announced that Catholic Welfare & Development, the charitable arm of the archdiocese of Cape Town, is closing down in early 2019.
• Fr Vitus Mjengu of Mariannhill dies at 58 in a car crash on November 6. He is the fourth priest this year to die in a car accident.
• The bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo warns of a humanitarian crisis as Angola expels 500000 Congolese in a crackdown on informal diamond mining.
• The world’s oldest nun, Polish Dominican Sister Cecylia Maria Roszak, dies at the age of 110 on November 16.
• A French court gives retired Bishop André Fort of Orléans a suspended sentence for failing to report an allegation of abuse by a priest to the police in 2010.
• Durban Catholic activist Paddy Kearney, biographer of Archbishop Denis Hurley, dies suddenly at 76 on November 23.
• At the second annual National Day of Prayer in Soccer City, Johannesburg, Archbishop Tlhagale prays for “clean…God-fearing leaders”.

(Photos: Paul haring/CNS; Mike hutchings, Reuters/CNS; Marius Bosch, Reuters/CNS)