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M©tk®s 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.