From Our Vaults 48 Years Ago: January 4, 1976

Pope: Liberate without violence

Pope Paul VI has urged Christians to become “liberators” of people suffering from famine, injustices and economic and cultural neo-colonialism, but warned them against using violence as a path to liberation.

Sisters in SA since 1925

Six Sisters of Charity who came from Belgium to South Africa in 1925 celebrated their golden jubilees at a Mass in Pietersburg [today Polokwane]. Benedictine Abbot Fulgence le Roy was the celebrant.

Main: Fr David Jones after his ordination in Pretoria’s Sacred Heart cathedral. Following him is Archbishop George Daniel, and on the right is Fr André Blais OMI, founder of the Servants of Christ the Priest and the Handmaids of Christ the Priest. Inset Top: Francisco de Gouveia, 24, who will be ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Owen McCann of Cape Town in St Agnes church, Woodstock, on January 11. [He would become bishop of Oudtshoorn in 2010, serving there until 2018.] Inset Bottom: Schoenstatt Sister Edith Raidt, who has been appointed reader and associate professor in Afrikaans by the University of the Witwatersrand.

Vatican: Seminary must close

The Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature has rejected an appeal by renegade Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre against an order by the Holy See to close his ultra-conservative seminary in Êcole, Switzerland. [Lefebvre would later be excommunicated and founded the schismatic Society of St Pius X.]

Editorial: Catechetical rights

The Synod of Bishops in September 1977 will discuss catechetics. Editor Mgr Donald de Beer writes that bishops and parents “have a right and responsibility to demand…that catechetical methods approved by the Church and applied in its schools and parishes will bring their children to a practical understanding of the whole of Catholic doctrine appropriate to their age and intelligence”.

Previous “From The Vaults” articles at https://www.scross.co.za/category/from-our-vaults/