Huge Catholic procession underway in the Philippines

Masses of barefooted devotees gathered in Manila on Monday in a bid to touch a centuries-old icon of Jesus Christ, a frenzied annual event that is one of the world’s biggest displays of Catholic devotion.

The life-sized statue is believed by many in Asia’s bastion of Catholicism to have miraculous powers, and more than one million people converged around the procession’s path last year when two people died in the crush.

Devotees attempt to get close enough to the statue as it is paraded on a carriage, then climb on each others’ shoulders to kiss the icon or wipe it with white towels.


Others fight to touch thick lengths of rope that the pilgrims use to pull the statue’s carriage, which passes slowly along Manila’s streets throughout the day before returning to its home in the historic Quiapo church.

Many walk Manila’s hot concrete streets without shoes as a sign of penance and to imitate Jesus carrying the cross barefooted before he was crucified.

The statue is called the Black Nazarene, given its name because of its charred color that is believed to have occurred when it survived a fire aboard a ship when being brought to the Philippines from Mexico in the early 1600s.

Such extreme forms of worship are a hallmark of the Philippines which is 80 percent Roman Catholic, a legacy of centuries of Spanish colonialism that ended in 1898.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who often gives conflicting signals about his religious convictions and criticizes the Church’s leaders, nevertheless offered encouragement to those involved in Monday’s procession.

“Prayers are likely answered because we do not give up or get tired from asking God for the fulfillment of our heart’s desires,” Duterte said.

“Such is the phenomenal expression of faith of the millions of devotees in the form of gratitude, petition, and sacrifice shown in the image of the Black Nazarene every feast day on the 9th of January every year.”

Security threat

This year’s event is being held under the threat of Islamic militant attacks, with authorities reporting more than 5,700 police  deployed to provide security.

Police chief Ronald dela Rosa has said repeatedly in recent days that extremists who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group may try to stage a terrorist attack.

The Philippines has a Muslim minority that is mainly based in the south of the country and has long resented the Catholic domination of their ancestral homelands.

A separatist rebellion in the south has claimed more than 120,000 lives since the 1970s.

The major rebel organizations are now involved in peace talks with the government and no longer waging armed conflict.

But there are various small hardline groups that continue to carry out attacks, particularly against Catholics.

The most recent deadly attack was a bomb blast at a crowded market in Duterte’s hometown of Davao in September last year that killed 15 people.

As part of security measures for the festival, police raided an Islamic center in the heart of Manila on Saturday although they only arrested two people who were found with illegal drugs, police said.

Nevertheless Dela Rosa encouraged devotees to not be cowed by the security threats.

“Our message to the millions of Black Nazarene devotees: don’t be afraid. God is with us,” he said. CBB/rga

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Pizza for the poor as Mother Teresa set for sainthood

Tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked into St. Peter’s square on Sunday to hear Pope Francis proclaim Mother Teresa a saint.

The nun, revered for her work with the poor of Kolkata, will be elevated to Catholicism’s celestial pantheon at a canonization mass presided over by Francis and due to get underway at 0830 GMT.

Around 100,000 faithful have been issued tickets for the mass, although the Vatican could easily have issued double that number but for space and security restrictions.

Helicopters buzzing over the 16th-century basilica testified to the huge security operation underway. Some 3,000 officers were on duty to ensure the day passed off peacefully.

Among the assembled crowd were some 1,500 poor or needy people who are looked after by the Italian branches of Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity. After the mass they were to be Francis’s guests at the Vatican for a giant pizza lunch served by 250 sisters and 50 male members of the order.

Teresa died 19 years ago on Monday in the Indian city where she spent her adult life, first teaching, then tending to the dying poor.

It was in the latter role, at the head of her now worldwide order that Teresa became one of the most famous women on the planet.

Born to Kosovar Albanian parents in Skopje — then part of the Ottoman empire, now the capital of Macedonia — she won the 1979 Nobel peace prize and was revered around the world as a beacon for the Christian values of self-sacrifice and charity.

She was simultaneously regarded with scorn by secular critics who accused her of being more concerned with evangelism than with improving the lot of the poor.

The debate over the nun’s legacy has continued after her death with researchers uncovering financial irregularities in the running of her Order and evidence mounting of patient neglect, insalubrious conditions and questionable conversions of the vulnerable in her missions.

Miracles or medicine

Sceptics were absent from the Vatican Sunday however as Francis prepared to pay homage to a woman he sees as the embodiment of his vision of a “poor church for the poor.”

“Tomorrow we will have the joy of seeing Mother Teresa proclaimed a saint,” the Argentinian pontiff said on Saturday. “And how she deserves to be!”

By historical standards, Teresa has been fast-tracked to sainthood, thanks largely to one of the few people to have achieved canonisation faster, John Paul II.

The Polish cleric was a personal friend of Teresa and as the pope at the time of her death, he was responsible for her being beatified in 2003.

Achieving sainthood requires the Vatican to approve accounts of two miracles occurring as a result of prayers for Teresa’s intercession.

The first one, ratified in 2002, was of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, who says she recovered from ovarian cancer a year after Teresa’s death — something local health officials have put down to medical advances rather than the power of prayer.

In the second, approved last year, Brazilian Marcilio Haddad Andrino says his wife’s prayers to Teresa led to brain tumours disappearing. Eight years later, Andrino and his wife Fernanda will be in the congregation on Sunday.

Unique example

Also due to be in the crowd at St. Peter’s was Teresa Burley, an Italy-based American teacher of children with learning difficulties who says the soon-to-be Saint Teresa inspired her vocation.

“I’m also named Teresa,” she told AFP on the eve of the ceremony. “I remember growing up admiring the things she did for children and the poor.

“We need to remember we are here to help each other. We need to be here for those who can’t help themselves. It’s the same for refugees arriving here: we have to be there to help them transition into their new lives.”

Many Indians have made the trip to Rome, among them Kiran Kakumanu, 40, who was blessed by Teresa when he was a baby and grew up to become a priest.

Abraham, an Indian expatriate in London, said Teresa’s life had set a unique example to the world.

“She practised Christianity. The majority of Christians only spend their time talking about it.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

What the Pope can do

 

In the Philippines, Pope Francis will have the mother of all pulpits.

 

He will surely use it to convey words of comfort for the afflicted. But will he also have a message that will shake up the comfortable, even a gentle prick of the conscience that will recognize the deep social injustices afflicting the only Catholic nation in Asia?

 

Most of the world already knows better than to expect only soothing sentiments from this pontiff. Of course, few here expect the Christmas scolding he gave Vatican officials for "arrogance" and "hypocrisy," among other choice weaknesses. 

 

But he must know that he faces a rare opportunity to make a lasting impact on a country with structural inequities comparable to the worst in his native Latin America.

 

If he saw images from the latest Nazareno procession, he will be acutely aware that a lack of religious fervor is not one of our problems. What is glaringly obvious is that our society does not practice what has been preached by many generations of priests on our shores.

 

It's interesting that he chose to combine Sri Lanka and the Philippines in a single trip: the former has a Catholic minority and will treat him not much differently from any popular head of state. Then he flies to the Philippines, where he will have a sense of what the Second Coming could be like.

 

The first Jesuit Pope will not be content with bringing inspiration. He wants to get stuff done. There are indications that climate change and poverty will be his major themes, especially when he visits Leyte and survivors of Typhoon Yolanda.

 

What many papal observers await is how he will frame his message. He has denounced the worst effects of capitalism, evident in what is happening to the planet and the world's poor. But will the Philippines be merely a showcase of the fate of others if they do not heed his call to address these twin ills?

 

Or will he inspire Filipinos to do more than seek his blessings and to solve worldy problems in our backyard?

 

Nearly everyone I've spoken with about the papal visit has a wish list for what can be done during this historic event. Some of my favorites;

 

1. Denounce torture by the state, which the Pope's own country Argentina has had to struggle to overcome. The Philippine police, the same force that the Pope will see protecting him in large numbers, is notorious for its abuse of ordinary citizens, with torture a common occurrence and occasionally a form of entertainment, as an Amnesty International report asserted late last year. No police officer has yet been convicted of torture.

 

2. Admonish erring priests, apologize on their behalf and call for their punishment. It could very well be that our culture of impunity is rooted in the socially influential, such as men of the cloth, being above the law. 

 

3. "Be more scientific." In addition to trusting in God, the Pope can urge Filipinos to trust in education and our own drive to deal with our problems. It's pointless to blame God for disasters; He gave us the will and mind to adapt and mitigate. As the Pope himself has said, "God is not a magician with a magic wand." A believer in evolution and the Big Bang theory, Pope Francis is a model for how to be a man of science and a man of faith at the same time. 

 

4. "Clean as you go." As he prepares a major encyclical this year on the environment, the "green pontiff" can demonstrate his moral power before the multitudes in Luneta. The papal crowd need not be like the Nazareno crowd or any other large public gathering in the Philippines. It can refrain from leaving garbage, now and forever. 

source: gmanetwork.com

Francis, the revolutionary pope

 

It’s less than a week before Pope Francis steps foot in the Philippines to visit Yolanda survivors and other members of the Filipino faithful. Before his historic visit, GMA News Online looks back at why the Pontiff—the first Jesuit and the first non-European and Latin American pope in 1,300 years—is shaping up to be a revolutionary leader of the Catholic Church. 

 

Before he became Pope Francis, the pontiff was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the son of a rail worker father and a housewife mother. He led a simple life as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires before he was elected to the papacy in March 2013. 

 

Moments after his election, Pope Francis made history by taking on the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, who was known to have shunned wealth to live in poverty.

 

Throughout his almost two-year leadership, Pope Francis has proven to be a pope to watch, one that has breathed life back into a tired church with his views on controversial issues, including the treatment of gays and lesbians, evolution, divorce and others.

 

LGBTs should be respected

 

In a remarkable change from his predecessor Benedict, who said homosexuality was an intrinsic disorder, Francis said that when homosexuals told him they were always condemned by the Church and felt "socially wounded," he told them "the Church does not want to do this."

 

Pope Francis defended gays from discrimination by saying he was in no position to judge members of the Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender community.
 

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?" the pope said.

 

"The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this (orientation) but that they must be integrated into society," he said in 2013.

 

However, the Pope also referred to the Catholic Church's universal Catechism, which says that while homosexual orientation is not sinful, homosexual acts are.

 

"The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. The problem is lobbying by this orientation, or lobbies of greedy people, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the worse problem," he said.

 

Evolution not in contradiction with God

 

Another issue where Pope Francis diverted from the longtime stance of the Catholic Church is on the topic of evolution.

In October of last year, Pope Francis embraced evolution and said the Big Bang Theory is not at odds with God’s teachings.

 

Addressing a meeting of the Pontificial Academy of Sciences, an independent body housed in the Vatican and financed largely by the Holy See, Francis said scientific explanations for the world did not exclude the role of God in creation.

 

"The beginning of the world is not the work of chaos that owes its origin to something else, but it derives directly from a supreme principle that creates out of love," he said.

 

"The 'Big Bang', that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God, on the contrary it requires it," he said.

 

"Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of [divine] creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve," the pope added.

 

Abortion still horrific

 

Yet while he has embraced views that some may call revolutionary for the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church, there are some issues on which Pope Francis stays with the script. A notable issue which the Church has long condemned is the practice of abortion. 

 

Last year, Pope Francis, pushed by critics, called the act “horrific.”

 

"It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day," he said in a section of the speech about the rights of children around the world.

 

Abortion, he said, was part of a "throwaway culture" that had enveloped many parts of the world.

 

"Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as unnecessary," he said.

 

Moral renewal

 

Pope Francis has also proved that he was not immune to criticizing those in his backyard. In his New Year’s message, Pope Francis cited the need for moral upheaval in Rome and in the Vatican itself.

 

“The Curia needs to change, to improve ... a Curia that does not criticize itself, that does not bring itself up to date, that does not try to improve, is a sick body," the Pope said.
 

Francis even went as far as to say that some in the Curia acted as if they were "immortal, immune or even indispensable," an apparent reference to retired cardinals who remain in the Vatican and continue to exert influence.

 

With all of his pronouncements that have brought the Catholic Church into the light of the 21st Century, it’s no wonder the world’s Catholics have embraced Francis as the “people’s pope.” —KG, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com