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Danny McNamara wins Ashley
By Michael Finocchiaro
Savannah
ince 1953 the City of Savannah
has presented a prestigious and
unique award to only one high school
athlete each year. The Ashley Dearing
Award (named for a highly respected
Savannah civic leader) is given to the
most versatile and exceptional indi
vidual in football, basketball and a
spring sport. It is the supreme compli
ment to its recipient since his own
school cannot vote for the athlete.
That is, you are elected by the very
schools against which you compete.
The news media and television sta
tions that cover high school sports
also have a vote.
This year’s winner is Danny McNa
mara from Benedictine Military
School. He was the quarterback on the
football team, the point guard on the
basketball team and the shortstop on
the baseball team. He was a three year
starter who served as team captain on
all three teams besides being in the
National Honor Society, Leadership
Savannah, co-editor of the school year
book, Student Government Peer
Counseling and one of the top ranking
officers in the JROTC Program.
Part of the excitement at Bene-
The Southern Cross, Page 11
Dearing Award
dictine is that in the forty-seven years
the Dearing Award has existed, this
year marks the first time that brothers
have been winners. Tommy Mc
Namara, a Benedictine graduate, now
a starting receiver at Yale University,
won the Dearing Award in 1997 with
an almost identical resume.
Danny McNamara will attend Bates
College in Lewiston, Maine—one of
the finest academic schools in the
country where he will play football,
basketball and maybe even lacrosse.
Regardless, academics are his top pri
ority and all at Benedictine are
extremely proud of him.
Cross
But they didn’t know that police several hours
earlier had arrested four men and charged them with
criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor, after a police
officer drove by and noticed people on the scaffold
ing.
“No one has been charged with vandalism and
there’s no way of saying if anyone went before
them, or after they were arrested, and committed the
damage,” Detective Sgt. Keith Mack said Thursday.
Goldsmith didn’t notice the damaged cross on the
south steeple until Monday, partially because the
top levels of scaffolding had been blocked to keep
workers from bumping into the original gold leaf.
The only way the vandals could have bypassed
the blockade was to climb on the outside bars of the
scaffolding, Goldsmith said.
They climbed 200 feet to reach the 6-foot-tall
copper cross, which takes about 10 minutes.
Workers found no graffiti. But a lightning rod that
had been connected to the cross was pulled off.
“It appears (the vandals) tried to physically
remove the cross from its structural support,”
Goldsmith said. “Gold leafing—if it’s scraped or
touched by fingers, it’s ruined. So there’s expensive
handprints and fingerprints up there.”
Police climbed to the steeple to dust for those fin
gerprints, Goldsmith said.
Several dents in the base of the cross won’t be
repaired. If workers had removed the cross and
taken it to a shop, that would have delayed the pro
ject by a couple of weeks.
“Those dents will not be noticeable from the
ground and won’t hinder the splendor of the cross,”
Goldsmith said.
The $30,000 damage estimate includes the cost of
fire extinguishers that were exhausted, the shattered
equipment, labor hours and repairs.
The construction site is surrounded by no tres
passing signs and a 10-foot tall fence that Gold
smith believes the vandals scaled. The property was
guarded only during daylight hours, but no security
was provided at night.
Church officials felt the signs, the fence and police
patrols were sufficient at night, Goldsmith said. But
full-time police security has since been added.
The cathedral is the mother church of the diocese,
said Barbara King, director of communications for
the Catholic Diocese of Savannah.
“It’s very regrettable that this happened, that
someone would vandalize such a wonderful struc
ture that is not only significant to Catholics in south
Georgia, but has historical and nostalgic meaning
for the general population,” she said.
Reprinted by permission from the SAVANNAH
Morning News.
Thursday, May 18, 2000
Danny McNamara
Secret
(Continued from page 5)
to Our Lady of Fatima for saving his
life, and he hinted at what Cardinal
Sodano would reveal an hour later.
Speaking about the world wars, Nazi
concentration camps, Soviet gulags,
abortion and other 20th century “hor
rors,” the pope said, “here in Fatima ...
these times of tribulation were foretold,
and Our Lady asked for prayer and
penance to abbreviate them.”
Cardinal Sodano said that Sister
Lucia—whom the pope met with pri
vately before the Mass to beatify her
cousins, Jacinta and Francisco—con
firmed the Vatican’s interpretation.
Navarro-Vails said that several
weeks before the beatification, Sister
Lucia was informed of the pope’s
decision to reveal the secret and was
asked to review the Vatican’s inter
pretation of the message. The
spokesman would not say whom the
pope sent to see Sister Lucia at the
Carmelite cloister in Coimbra.
Navarro-Vails also said the pope
had several reasons for delegating the
announcement to Cardinal Sodano in
addition to the fact that the cardinal is
his top aide. First, he said, it is
because the pope is a subject in the
messages and, second, “because it
concerns a private revelation, which
is different from a biblical revela
tion.” The Catechism of the Catholic
Church explains that through Scrip
ture and in Christ, in a full and ex
ceptional way, God has revealed
everything that is essential for faith.
However, it says, “Throughout the
ages, there have been so-called pri
vate revelations, some of which have
been recognized by the authority of
the church. They do not belong, how
ever, to the deposit of faith. It is not
their role to improve or complete
Christ’s definitive revelation, but to
help live more fully by it in a certain
period of history.” Cardinal Sodano
said the message would be published
only with the commentary because
“the text contains a prophetic vision
similar to those found in Sacred
Scripture, which do not describe with
photographic clarity the details of
future events,” and, therefore, require
an interpretation.
In announcing the planned publica
tion, the cardinal told the crowd the
pope came to Fatima to beatify the
two children, but also to renew his
thanks to Our Lady of Fatima “for her
protection during these years of his
papacy. “This protection seems also
to be linked to the so-called ‘third
part’ of the secret of Fatima,” he said.
In the late 1930s, Sister Lucia made
public the first two parts of the mes
sages from Mary, which the children
kept secret. The first two parts includ
ed the vision of hell shown to the
children, along with prophecies con
cerning the outbreak of World War II,
the rise of communism and the ulti
mate triumph of the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, including its triumph
over Russia if the country were con
secrated to her Immaculate Heart.
In interviews after the announce
ment, Cardinal Sodano said the pope
had been planning to reveal the secret
“for some time. It was a matter of
Archbishop Egan
(Continued from page 1)
mentary schools and helped raise mil
lions of dollars to support education
programs and to support religious and
homes for retired clergy.
He also was part of the creation by
the state’s bishops of the Connecticut
Federation of Catholic Schools in
1990 to lobby for legislative support
and encourage enrollment.
The Catholic population of
Bridgeport has grown during his
tenure there, from 331,000 in 1988 to
361,000 now, according to the
Official Catholic Directory. But at the
same time, the number of active
diocesan priests has shrunk, from 223
finding an opportune occasion. And
that came with the beatification.
“But it is also a decision tied to the
closing of the millennium, to the cen
tury just passed, a century full of suf
fering and tribulation,” the cardinal
told reporters.
In his public announcement,
Cardinal Sodano said the pope want
ed the message published because
prayers for conversion and for divine
assistance in responding to threats
against the Christian faith are still
necessary.
to 183, and the number of parishes
has gone from 91 to 88.
Archbishop Egan will be moving to
the second largest U.S. archdiocese,
which has a Catholic population of
about 2.4 million and has 413 parish
es and 585 active diocesan priests.
The New York Archdiocese, which
includes Manhattan, Bronx and Staten
Island and seven upstate counties, is
home to 238 Catholic elementary
schools, two diocesan seminaries, two
seminaries run by religious orders and
12 Catholic colleges and universities.
Archbishop Egan also will have the
assistance of a half dozen auxiliary
bishops in his new see.