Mercy as national ID

Immediate reaction to confirmation that Pope Francis will visit the Philippines January 15 to 19, 2015, titillated many. Will he, unlike his predecessor Paul VI speak at a university other than Santo Tomas this time?  Like John Paul II, will he lodge at the nunciature’s spartan quarters? And will more of the faithful who, crested at over four million in Luneta for JPII, come?

Are these really the significant concerns?  

This is the visit of a pastor who’d booked his return to Argentina, never thinking the conclave would elect him as 265^th successor to Peter the Fisherman, after Benedict XVI resigned. The last time a pontiff quit was in 1415 when Pope Gregory stood down to avoid schism.

Rome will announce the detailed timetable later this year, Manila’s Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, said Francis had earlier expressed his wish to visit victims of supertyphoon “Yolanda” in Eastern Visayas.  Would he hopscotch then to earthquake devastated Bohol?

In less than two years, Francis won for himself the admiration of millions, including non-Catholics, even atheists, for his openness, shunning trappings of power.” He shunned the papal apartments and lives instead a modest Casa Santa Marta guest house, BBC notes. “He lines up for coffee.”

“The thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds like a field hospital after battle," Francis wrote “. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugar. You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else."

“Painting me as a sort of superman, I find offensive," he told the editor of Italy's leading daily newspaper. Francis makes decisions only prayerful reflection. He rues over making "many mistakes”.  “I am a man who laughs, cries, sleeps quietly, and has friends, just like everyone else.”

There are many forms of poverty, like material destitution that disfigures the faces of people Francis stated. But “there is only one real kind of poverty: not living as children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ... Unjust social conditions that rob people of their dignity lead to moral destitution—a kind of “impending suicide.”

In his first year, Francis instituted reforms focused on the much criticized Vatican Bank and finances. He named eight cardinals from to constitute his inner advisory council. None was from Italy. Cardinal George Pell from Australia, heads a new ministry to co-ordinate Holy See finances.

In remarks that will resonate in the Philippines, Francis said:  Christians who lead “a double life” by giving money to the Church while stealing from the state deserve to be tied to a rock and thrown into the sea. People engaged in corruption are “whitewashed tombs”. A life based on corruption is “varnished putrefaction”.

Hear that Senators Vicente Sotto III and Gringo Honasan? Both hastily withdrew their proposed resolution to accord special lodgings for detained-for-corruption Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla.

Francis tackled simmering issues of clerical sexual abuse and a greater role for women in the church. He named initial members for a new commission.

“The group includes an equal number of women and men, more lay people than clergy, plus an Irish activist Marie Collins who was abused as a 13-year-old by a hospital chaplain, New York Times noted. Yet, again “Francis had deliberately shaken up the usual way of doing things at the Vatican”.

The pope left the door ajar for future Asian and African members where the church “is growing most rapidly and the issue of child sexual abuse is still taboo”.  Both the scope of its work and future members will be set by the commission itself, said Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi.

“A quiet revolution is afoot in the Vatican”, reports AFP. Francis’ new appointments are prying loose, slowly but surely, the Curia   from the centuries-old grip of Italian apparatchiks.

John Paul II and Benedict XVI had little appetite for turf wars in Church's corridors of power. But the world's first Latin American pontiff has had no such qualms, appointing fresh faces from diverse countries.

“The pope is putting himself on a collision course with the Curia's traditional power,” said Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera. “He is up against ferocious ambition, corruption and, sometimes, secret wantonness.

Here, Jennalyn Sentino was born early Sunday and officially shoved the country’s population to 100 million.  She received gifts.  The father, 45, is van driver Clemente Sentino, He and the child’s mother, Dallin Cabigayan, 27, are not yet married.

“She just happened to get pregnant. But we do have plans to get married,” he told AFP. “I make just enough to get by but at least my job pays regularly. We will find a way to make it fit.”

The Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines, meanwhile told its 82 million adherents: the most distinctive way to prepare spiritually for the coming of Pope Francis is for the country to become “a people rich in mercy.”

“Let us make mercy our national identity, wrote Archbishop Socrates Villegas, CBCP president. Trust in God’s mercy is part and parcel of our traditional Filipino Christian culture. Let us make the practice of mercy our gift to the pope when he comes to visit us.”