In 2001 an editorial that argued that the Catholic Church should allow the use of condoms in marriages in which only one spouse is infected with HIV was picked up by the BBC World News,[2] Voice of America, Time,[3] and other publications.

In 2011, an editorial that criticised the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the beatification of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican[4] was reported on widely, especially in the international Catholic press.

[5][6] In 2014, an editorial calling on the Catholic Church to condemn controversial anti-gay laws in Nigeria and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014[7] was picked up by the news service[8] of the Vatican's missionary dicastery, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

A Vatican analyst for the Italian newspaper La Stampa suggested that by picking up The Southern Cross’ critical editorial but not a congratulatory statement by the president of the Nigerian bishop's conference, the Vatican had voiced its disapproval of the draconian policies which are tantamount to persecution, and called on African bishops to "speak out ... against the discriminatory legislation and violence directed at homosexuals, many of whom are fellow Catholics.

Fr Kelly was appointed its first editor, and he proposed the name "The Southern Cross", after a defunct Anglican newspaper.

During Vatican II, Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, a leading participant in the council, regularly wrote anonymous but well-informed articles for The Southern Cross.

Since then The Southern Cross has sporadically published, including I Call You Companions by Fr Nicholas King SJ (1995, in association with the Catholic Bookshop in Cape Town), The Holy Land Trek by Günther Simmermacher (2010),[11] a guide to the film The Passion of the Christ, two anthologies by long-standing columnists, Any Major Sunday by Owen Williams and Moerdyk Files by Chris Moerdyk, and Church Chuckles,[12] a collection of Catholic jokes compiled by Simmermacher with cartoons by Conrad Burke.