Critics and netizens continue to rain flak on President Benigno S. Aquino III for criticizing Church officials in the presence of Pope Francis but Vatican officials, like Fr. Federico Lombardi, refuse to be baited.
Lombardi, a Jesuit priest who is Vatican’s press secretary, described PNoy’s speech as “unique” in the sense that he was able to intersect his own sufferings during the Martial Law period with the challenges that his administration is now facing. The local clergy will take the cue from Lombardi but many priests are mad that the President criticized the Pope in front of his brothers in the Church.
I caught President Aquino on live TV delivering the message in rapid fire. He looked rather tense while Pope Francis looked somber as he listened through a headset that, I supposed, had the official Vatican interpreter translating the Aquino speech in Spanish.
Although the TV coverage had a running commentary by on-site reporters and studio anchors, it was not hard to imagine that the atmosphere became tense after PNoy made the statement.
The Catholic Church and Malacañang have been at loggerheads over the Reproductive Health Law, the Disbursement Acceleration Fund and government corruption in general.
Political conflicts that pit the State and Church are nothing new, and certainly Pope Francis, who has lived through a lot of political troubles in his home country Argentina, was not surprised to hear that the Philippine government has a feud with the local Church.
If you’ve been following media updates and features about the charismatic pope, there’s a chapter devoted to the anti-Church stance of top Argentine government officials led by then President Nestor Kirchner (2003 – 2007) and his wife Cristina. The couple was allergic to the then main cleric of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio, whom they tagged as the leader of the political opposition simply because he talked about the misery of the poor and immorality in government.
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded Nestor when he died in 2007. She is the incumbent President and according to reports, before Bergoglio became Pope Francis, she refused to see him a dozen times to talk about social problems.
But that is getting ahead of the story. Bergoglio also lived through Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, a campaign launched by the military junta to hunt down left-wing rebel groups that gained wide support owing to abuses by the junta and a weakened economy in 1976 – 1983. As a result, the military led by General Jorge Rafael Videla cracked down on the rebel movement and made guerillas “disappear” in the dead of night. Oftentimes, innocent civilians were killed during the seven-year military campaign.
Bergoglio, who was then provincial superior of the Jesuit Congregation in Argentina, is said to have worked tirelessly and silently in rescuing activist-priests in detention.
The word “desaparecido” or “the disappeared” had its roots in Argentina’s Dirty War and I recall that Filipinos who fought the Marcos dictatorship used this term to describe comrades who mysteriously disappeared and believed to have been slain by the military, one of them, Cebu Redemptorist priest Fr. Rudy Romano.
In the sense that Argentina and the Philippines share bitter experiences under an oligarchy succeeded by a despotic military dictatorship, the subject would have been a great frame for President Aquino’s welcome statement. I even think Pope Francis had a mind to speak about the late Corazon “Cory” Aquino either in his prepared speech or in a closed-door meeting, but since PNoy chose a “unique” angle, to use Lombardi’s words, Francis, who is known as a master of improvisation, made adjustments in his own response and dropped the Cory subject altogether.
Still, I will not say that Francis allowed the occasion to pass without a response, whether veiled or otherwise, directed at President Aquino.
In so many words, the pope said that while he came for a pastoral visit, an invitation from the Philippine President made his trip even more significant. Francis underlined this part of his statement by looking at PNoy who was seated in front facing the VIP guests. I think it was an indirect way of saying, “I didn’t expect you would bring this up in front of my brothers, the bishops.”
Francis is scheduled to leave at 10 o’clock this morning and if PNoy has a mind to mend fences with the Church, he still has time. I hope he will be humble enough to accept that his speech was most inappropriate.
A public apology would be a fitting response to the call of the Holy Father to forgive and “move forward”.
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