CAPILLAS
Though many cannot deny that it was only a matter of time before he passed away due to his advanced age and deteriorating health, still, the death of Cebu Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal at 7 am last Tuesday was cause for grieving among the Catholic faithful in Cebu and the rest of the country.
And for good reason; as yesterday’s news stories that recounted his life story attested, he had been a peacemaker and this role helped avert what could have been catastrophic consequences for the country.
From his exhortation to Filipinos to engage in peaceful protest against the results of the 1986 snap presidential election to his persuasion of a key military official to yield during the 1989 coup attempt led by then Col. Gringo Honasan and then–former president Joseph Estrada in the second Edsa Revolution of 2001, Vidal proved that he was ready to answer the call for peace.
As a non-Catholic who never had the chance to meet him personally, I had to rely on a smattering of casual and personal accounts of Cebu Daily News Editor-in-Chief Edra Benedicto, former CDN publisher Eileen Mangubat and some Facebook friends who made posts on Vidal’s death to somehow get a handle of Vidal’s legacy and the overflowing of reverence shown by those who mourned his eventual demise.
From Ma’am Mangubat, I learned that Vidal is a man possessed with the patience of Job, someone who is willing to forgive and give the benefit of the doubt to the most hopeless of cases.
After performing the last rites on the late president and strongman Ferdinand Marcos and visiting former president Joseph Estrada during his detention, it isn’t hard to believe it.
* * *
Ma’am Ed was more detailed as she recounted her stint at the church beat and how she and other veteran reporters would find Vidal to be a readily accessible news source.
In particular, she recounted the time when she personally saw Vidal burn the phone lines to persuade then Air Force Chief Gen. Jose Commendador to surrender during the 1989 coup attempt and how he invited her to take a walk with him at the gardens of the Archbishop’s Palace as he pondered on the likely outcome of his talks with Commendador.
That he succeeded was crucial in averting what could have been the collapse of the first Aquino presidency and the country’s plunge into becoming a banana republic.
But that’s politics and history, and while it may form part of his legacy, it doesn’t divert from Vidal’s primary role as shepherd to his flock in Cebu and already there have been stories being shared on mainstream and social media of how Vidal had touched the lives of the faithful and even those outside of the Catholic faith.
More stories will be told of Vidal’s generosity and kindness of spirit in the coming days and it’s already a given that not a single eye will be dry on the day that he will finally be laid to rest on Thursday next week. He will be sorely missed.
* * *
President Rodrigo Duterte’s order for an immediate phaseout of passenger jeepneys 15 years old and above is unrealistic, and I doubt if it can be implemented in January next year as he had targeted.
Already, both Congress and government transport agencies had yet to finalize the details of how transport network services like Uber and Grab would operate, and now they are faced with the problem of how to finalize and enforce the phaseout of these aging jeepneys without hurting both the riding public and the jeepney operators and drivers.
For no matter how much they modernize these jeepneys, if the same absence of discipline and defiance of traffic laws continue to persist, then the modernization may prove a failure.
And while we would all like a modern mass transport system, it doesn’t come cheap either for the commuters or the operators. But why would the operators charge more for solar-powered jeepneys when these units are more cost effective in the long run than diesel-fueled jeepneys?
These and more questions need to be answered as the country braces for the likelihood of a phaseout that should have been done a long time ago but got delayed due to lack of planning and political will.