NEW POST FOR MGR.

WHELAN
CAPE TOWN
ARCHBISHOP WHELAN of IS. Bloemfontein, whose controversial statement on apartheid became world news early this year, now relinquishes his position as director of the South African bishops' department for press, cinema and radio.
It goes to Archbishop McCann of Cape Town. who has been reelected chairman of the South African Bishops' Conference. Archbishop Whelan takes over the education department instead.
In February, Mgr. Whelan said that thc country's social and economic difficulties could he solved without necessarily abandoning the apartheid policy. A week later the hierarchy reaffirmed its opposition to apartheid and said that individual bishops' statements were made on their own responsibility. At thc bishops' meeting in Pretoria Bishop Gerard van Velsen of Kroonstad said that ecumenism in South Africa must develop a South African character. He is director of the hierarchy's Afrikaans Affairs department. Most of the nation's 950.000 Catholics speak English or Bantu languages. The bishop said that ignorance stage. still held the country in a pre ecumenical sta and that increasing contacts in the social, cultural
and charitable fields were para
was not a
and charitable fields were para
mount. Ecumenism w form of conversion. but priests and laity alike seemed to think that anything other than conversion techniques was a betrayal of the Una Sancta. Velsen Bishop van Vels made special reference to the three Dutch Reformed Churches. which, he said, "live in an even greater isolation than we do."