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PAGE 4-A—The Southern Cross, January 5, 1963 Solves Mystery Of Origin Of Egyptian Obelisk That Adorns St. Peter’s Square SOLDIER SANTA BRINGS JOY TO REFUGEES - “Felices Navidad" (Merry Christ mas) is the greeting from Master Sergeant Nector Morales of Fort Dix, N. J., as he distributes toys to more than 1,000 Cuban refugee children at Centro Hispano Catolico, diocesan Spanish center in downtown Miami. The Puerto Rican born soldier has collected thousands of toys annually for Korean orphans. This year he brought 1,300 toys to Miami for the Cuban children. - (NC Photos) Sacred Bible Site Found, Archaeologists Believe Irish Priest Ousted VATICAN CITY, (Radio, NC) - New light has been shed on the mysterious Egyptian obe lisk that stands in the vast square in front of St. Peter’s basilica. It was the light of a mid summer sun that gave the first clue to the solution now ad vanced by Filippo Magi, di rector of excavations and ar cheological research in Vatican City. Studying the obelisk’s ancient Roman inscription one brilliant August day, Magi noticed tell tale marks of an earlier in scription and proceeded to de cipher them. He discovered that the obelisk had first been erected by a Roman prefect of Egypt, Caius Cornelius Gallus, a poet,^sol dier and politician who fell in to disgrace and died by his own hand. The present inscription by the Emperor Caligula was cut into the stone after the bronze letters of the original inscrip tions of Gallus were removed. Holes left by the rivets which had attached the earlier legend on the obelisk were what first attracted Magi’s attention. They also enabled him to reconstruct the original. The earlier inscription an nounced that the obelisk had been erected in a place known as Forum Julium by Gallus. That place, unknown today, was named after the birthplace of Gallus in Gaul, Forum Julii, the modern city of Frejus on the French Riviera. Gallus was born in 69 B. C. of poor parents. He first achieved renown in Rome for his poems, later distinguished himself as a soldier and finally was made the prefect of Egypt. He incurred the displeasure of Augustus Ceasar and was relieved of his post by the Roman Senate, which also con fiscated all his property and condemned him to exile. He commited suicide in 26 B. C. All that had been known of the obelisk's history until now was that it had been brought from Egypt to Rome by the Emperor Caligula to adorn a Roman square and that it was placed in its present position in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V. It lacks Egyptian hiero glyphics. Among the obelisks in Rome, the 83-feet high monu ment is second in size only to the one near the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which is 106 feet high. The problems of its removal to its present site under the direction of the architect Do menico Fontana are still legendary in Rome. The most celebrated legend says that spectators were bound under pain of death to keep silent, but that one cried out that the ropes raising it upright were about to catch fire from fric tion and thus saved the monu ment known to millions. In a report on Magi’s work on the obelisk, the Vatican City daily, L’Osservatore Romano, styled it “the most sensational archeological discovery of the year.’’ New Convent For Protestant Community CASTELL-ON-THE -RHINE, Germany, (NC) - A new Pro testant community of women similar to a Catholic religious society has dedicated a con vent near here. Casteller Ring (the Society of Castell), whose main purpose is welfare work for the young, has 27 members, 11 of whom have taken solemn vows. The members profess the same vows of poverty, chastity and obedience which Catholic Re ligious profess. They wear ci vilian dress in public and don a black dress with a white hood and collar when in the convent. The women, who have adopted the Benedictine motto “Pray and Work,’’ have choir office seven times a day. A Lutheran community, the Sisters of Mary, already exists in a suburb of Darmstadt. CAMBRIDGE, Mass., (NC) - A team of archaeologists be lieves it has uncovered the sa cred site in the Biblical city of Sichem where Abram and Jacob worshiped in the 19th century before Christ. Harvard University pro fessor G. Ernest Wright said the site, which is mentioned in Genesis and reappears from time to time in the Old Tests- ment, was uncovered this past summer below the courtyard of Sichem's temple-fortress erected over the site in about 1650 B. C. He said that the existence of such a site, where an altar to the Lord and a sacred oak were located, was reported in an oral tradition kept alive by Israelite people for some 1,000 years before the Bible began to be written around the 11th cen tury before Christ. The major significance of the excavation, he said, is that it allows a history with dates, worked out archaeologically, to be set back-to-back with an oral tradition that predates the writing of the Bible. The archaeologists who made the discovery came from Har vard, the McCormick Theologi cal Seminary, Chicago, Drew University, Madison, N. J., and some other American and foreign institutions, Wright said. The Drew-McCormich-Har- vard expedition was begun in 1956. The city of Sichem, with its 4,000 years of history, now lies buried in a 10-acre mound just east of Nablus in Jordan, Wright said. Sichem is the first city men tioned in the Bible. When Abram and Jacob visited it, the city was a stronghold of an empire ruled from Egypt. SHANAGOLDEN, Ireland, (NC) - One of the more than 30 missionaries expelled from the Sudan in November said here that Sudanese officials told him only that he was ordered out of that African nation because he had finished his work. He is Father Thomas Broud- er of the Mill Hill Fathers who is now on leave here in his hometown. He reported that another Irish member of the Mill Hill Fathers ousted from the Sudan, Father Edward Sloane of Belfast, has gone to start a new mission in Kenya among a remote African tribe. Before his expulsion, Father Sloane had been arrested for preaching in church on the ground that this illegally made the church a “teaching estab lishment.’’ But the magistrate who heard the case dismissed it. (Since the Sudan won indepen dence in 1956, its Moslem- dominated government has sought to Islamize the part- pagan, part-Christian southern part of the country, the region from which the missioners were expelled. The government has allowed no new missionaries to enter the Sudan and in 1957 it nationalized all mission schools. Earlier this year it decreed the Missionary Socie ties Act, a law which prohibits all proselytizing and provides the legal basis for the expul sion of missioners.) Father Brouder, headmaster of a mission school in Malakal taken over five years ago, said he was given six weeks to leave the Sudan after receiving his notice of expulsion. When hi asked why he was being ordered out of the country, he said, the authorities claimed that he had completed his work there and that from now on Sudanese were going to take it over. BEST WISHES FROM St. Christopher’s Church and Missions CLAXTON, GA. Best Wishes From THE CATHOLIC YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS C. Y. O. Diocesan Director, Rev. Herbert J. Wellmeier Best Wishes To The Southern Cross jjj| ■ ■ Conducted by The Sisters Of St. Francis Columbus From Saint Francis I School Of Nursing