Storm no bar for Pope’s visit to the Visayas; Cebu ready in case of stopover
TACLOBAN CITY – The weather may not be ideal, but that will not deter Pope Francis from flying to Eastern Visayas today.
“The program is the same. We will fly to Tacloban tomorrow with the Holy Father,” Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said at yesterday’s briefing for the papal visit.
Lombardi said that while the weather is “not the best” they don’t think it will endanger the pontiff, who is in the country for a five-day pastoral and state visit.
On Friday, the Pope met with President Aquino and celebrated Mass at the Manila Cathedral. He also met with families at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City.
The Pope is is set to fly to Tacloban City in Leyte where he will hold Mass at the Daniel Romualdez Airport this morning and motor to Palo town later in the day.
Leyte was among the areas placed under storm signal no. 1 by the state weather bureau Pagasa as tropical storm Amang (international name: Mekkhala) continues its path towards Eastern Visayas. (See related story on page 4)
Officials are not discounting the possibility that the plane carrying the Pope may be diverted to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport to wait for the weather to clear.
Maj. Gen. Nicanor Vivar, commander of the military’s Central Command which covers the Visayas, earlier said they were placed on high alert and are ready to redeploy troops in case the Holy Father and his party make an unscheduled stop in Cebu.
On Tuesday, officials led by Transport Secretary Jose Emilio Abaya inspected the MCIA to evaluate its readiness for such a contingency.
Tight schedule
The Pope has a tight schedule today. Upon arrival in Tacloban, the pontiff will celebrate Mass at the airport before going on a motorcade to the Archbishop’s Residence in Palo. There he will have a private lunch with survivors of the Bohol earthquake and supertyphoon Yolanda which devastated large parts of Central and Eastern Visayas in 2013.
At 3 p.m., the Pope will visit and bless the Pope Francis Center for the Poor, which was built to care for the elderly, orphans and the sick within the compound of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lord’s Transfiguration in Palo.
Francis will then go to the cathedral – whose roof was blown away by Yolanda and had served as a shelter for people who lost their homes – to address the clergy, officials and lay people. He will also pray over the mass grave in the cathedral compound where about 150 victims of Yolanda are buried. The cathedral has been off limits to the public since three days ago. The Pope will also bless the reconstructed catehdral before he journeys back to Manila at 5 p.m.
Butterflies in stomach
For the past few days, Eric de Leon, a government employee and a part-time wedding singer, has been feeling butterflies in his stomach. “I’m excited but at the same time nervous,” said De Leon, who will sing the Responsorial Psalm in
Waray during the Pope’s open-air Mass at the Tacloban airport here
Waray, the Leyte dialect, as well as Cebuano, Hiligaynon and English would be used in parts of the Mass.
Other Yolanda survivors would have key roles during the historic Mass, according to Fr. Gilbert Urbina, chairman of the commission on liturgy of the Archdiocese of Palo. One of them is a a woman, who survived Yolanda but lost 11 family members. She would read a passage in the Bible as first reading.
The Mass will be attended by 30 bishops and 500 priests from churches in Samar, Iloilo, Capiz, Aklan, Bohol, Southern Leyte, Northern Samar, Biliran and Cebu.
At least 14,000 barricades that are 1.2 meters tall are now at the Mass site, which could accommodate up to 150,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of others, however, are expected to be in the Mass site’s fringes.
Rolando Asis, public works regional director for Eastern Visayas, said at least P75 million was spent on the preparations.
Jessica Panis wept in 1995 when she couldn’t see Pope John Paul II because her family was too poor to afford the trip to Manila.
With Pope Francis coming to Tacloban, nothing can stop the bubbly 41-year-old toy store clerk from seeing the pontiff — not a looming storm, not the long hours of waiting, not even the call of nature.
“There are so many things to be thankful for. Our house was destroyed by typhoon Yolanda but we didn’t lose anybody,” Panis said.
She also wanted to thank the pope for traveling a long distance to comfort typhoon survivors like her.
Clad in red boots and carrying a raincoat, jacket, scarf, sandwiches and a tarpaulin to sleep on, Panis walked several kilometers with family and friends to a field near Tacloban’s airport where Francis will celebrate Mass. She arrived 16 hours ahead of schedule.
“Actually, I’m wearing a diaper,” she said as she waited in a long line for a public portable toilet. “But I’d rather not use it now because it will surely be a long wait.”
Yolanda souvenir
As a gift to the Pope, President Aquino yesterday presented a wooden image of the Blessed Virgin Mary made from the wood of a tree that was destroyed by supertyphoon Yolanda.
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