Pope Francis supported him when he took over the President of the Philippines. Now he votes on the side

“Even in the fantastic violence, I think this will happen,” said Cardinal Pablo Vergonio David, who describes the day that he discovered that he was appointed as a member.

He was talking to the BBC in the Cathedral in Kalukan, on the outskirts of the Philippine capital, Manila. He was leaving the next day for Rome to join Conclave, one of the three Cardinals from the country who would participate in choosing the next Pope.

“Usually you expect the head of the bishops to become the Cardinate, but I am only a humble bishop for a small diocese, as most people know the inhabitants of the poor neighborhoods and the poor in urban areas, as you know.

“But I thought, perhaps, for Pope Francis, it is important that we have more Cardinals who are really being there.”

Cardinal David was only five months old, after its sudden rise last December. But in some respects, the legacy of the late Pope embodies his country.

Pope Francis had set himself a target to bring a Catholic church believed to have lost a common touch, as she returned to the people.

“APU Ambo”, as he calls him Cardinal David under his group, fits that task well, after spent his life in his campaign for the poor and the marginalized.

In the Philippines, there are the largest number of Roman Catholic population in Asia, about 80 % of 100 million people, and a third larger in the world.

This is one of the reasons why Cardinal Luis Antonio Talagl is the Philippine is Babapil, or the candidates to replace Pope Francis – it was also talked about as a competitor in the last doors 12 years ago.

The country is a bright point of the Roman Catholic Church, where faith is strong, its woven rituals in the fabric of society.

However, the church faces the opposite winds there. Politicians face their doctrines on divorce and family planning by politicians, and the most recent charismatic churches win transfers.

Pope Francis helped restore the morale in the Philippine Church, although he did not provide answers to these challenges, as well as being more welcoming the diversity and urged the clergy to be more responsive to the needs of the poor.

But those on the wing active in the church felt encouraged by its support.

As for the Cardinal David, the support was embarrassing when he faced his greatest test, during the war on drugs announced by former President Rodrigo Duttri in 2016.

He took me to see a plate he set up in front of his cathedral on the memory of the Dealus Santos entity, a 17 -year -old boy from his diocese, who was shot dead by the police in August 2017.

An entity was just one of the thousands who died in the Dotty campaign – estimates from 6300 to 30,000. What made his case different from the most is that the usual justification of the police, who was armed and arrested, was contradictory by eyewitnesses and security camera videos.

Police officers killed him asking his life. Three officers eventually convicted death, a rare example of accountability in the drug war.

Cardinal is still clearly affected by hundreds of murders that occurred in its diocese-a group of lower-income neighborhoods of the areas targeted by the police in the famous Turgeng, or “beating and defending” against drug dealers and alleged users.

“It was much to see the bodies of the left and right dead,” says Cardinal David.

“And you know, when I ask people what they think, as you know, why were these people targeted. They said they are drug users. I said, and what? What? Who told you that just because people use drugs, they deserve death?”

He began to provide a haven for those who were afraid that they were on the police beating lists, then drug rehabilitation programs, hoping that this would protect them.

He also did something that the Church did not do as a whole for several months: it has publicly criticized the drug war as illegal and immoral.

As a result, many death threats were received. President Doterti accused him of taking drugs and talked about beheading. The government also presented the charges of sedition against him, although this was eventually dropped.

In those difficult years, Cardinal David found that he had a strong supporter, in Rome.

On a visit to the city in 2019, Pope Francis took him aside to give him a special blessing, saying that he knew what was happening in his diocese and urges him to stay safe.

When they met again in 2023, the Pope stated that he was still alive, saying that the Pope laughed and told him: “The certificate has not yet been called!”

The role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has changed during its 500 -year history in the archipelago.

It was closely related to the Spanish conquest, and the Spanish monks working as colonial officials by the reality and the church became a great owner of the land. When the United States replaced Spain as the colonial ruler in 1898, and imposed the chapter of the church and the state, the political impact of Catholic clerics declined.

But the church kept loyalty to most of the population; To this day, after the sorting carried out by the Charismic Protestant Churches, approximately 80 % of the Filipinos know that they are a Roman Catholic.

Since independence in 1946, the church had an unstable relationship with power. It has made its deep roots and the establishment of the institution was an influential player, as it benefited from the political factions, but they also need their support to protect its interests.

The positions began to change in the seventies and eighties, the time when a young Pablo David and many other Supreme Church characters taught today to enter the priesthood.

This was the era of the “theology of liberation”, which came out of Latin America and argued that it was the duty of the clergy to fight poverty and injustice spread everywhere around them.

When President Marcus, the father of the current President of the Philippines, announced that martial law in 1972 began to prison and killed his critics, until some underground priests went to join armed resistance.

But the hierarchical sequence of the Church continued what he called “monetary cooperation” with Marcus’s dictatorship.

This changed dramatically in February 1986, when Cardinal Jaimi Sen called people to go out in the streets and oppose Marcus, which raised the famous “people’s power” that isolated the president.

Cardinal Sen would restore this role in 2001 when he helped overthrow the last besieged president, Joseph Estrada.

After that, though, church leaders were accused of confusing the successor of Estrada, Gloria Macapage Aroo, partly for their support in opposing the growing political and social pressure to expand the scope of family planning and give the legal nature.

They were reluctant to condemn President Doterti’s drug war because, despite the horrific human cost, it remained common to the Philippine public, at least away from the poorest areas where killings occurred.

Nearly 40 years after its pivotal role in overthrowing the Marcus regime, the church’s effect appears to be diminished, as happened a century ago.

For example, the intense opposition of the Church was unable to prevent the Philippines Conference from passing the 2012 reproductive health law that made family planning easily accessible.

This is despite the fact that many Filipino Catholics are still conservative in issues such as sex and divorce, says Giel Cornellio, the sociologist who has been widely written about Catholicism in the Philippines.

He says that the defeat of the Church on family planning indicates a decrease in the impact on national policy.

“The Catholic Church was practically marginalized during the presidency of Doterte. When Ferdinand” Boungong “nominated Marcos for the presidency in 2022, many Catholic leaders and institutions nominated their opposition and even the support of the opposition. But Marcus still wins.

Many Filipinos welcome this, including, apparently, Cardinal David.

“It is not among the church’s actions to rule, nor is the government’s work to manage the church,” he said.

“But we can pour each other – I cannot say that we will be non -political.

Even that limited view of the right role of the church, though, faced the opposition.

Thirteen years after the ecclesiastical objections over the draft reproductive health law, the Philippine Conference is now trying to obtain a draft law that legalizes divorce, which is something else that the church does not agree.

“I do not expect them to change their official faith, but in my job as a legislator, I try to address the problems faced by the Philippines, and I do not want them to interfere in my work. It is against our constitution to legislate in favor of any religion,” says Geraldine Roman, the first member of Congress in Philip.

It is a Catholic practice, and it is attributed to Pope Francis to create a more welcome environment for LGBTQ+ with his statement “Who am I to Governance”.

“No one makes me mistake me in my church now,” she says.

But it objects to the Catholic Church, which is pressure on the divorce bill, which says it will liberate thousands of Philippine women trapped in abusive marriages.

“The church is free to try to color Catholics to get rid of them in their marriages. But in the end, the decision of the spouses, not even the church, can interfere in this decision.”

Other challenges include a group that is increasingly separated. While the number of Roman Catholics has decreased only a little in the past three decades, the number of attendees has decreased at least once a week by half, to a little more than a third of the polls recently.

Then there are many scandals associated with the Catholic Church, especially the sexual assault on minors, which critics say Pope Francis says, while he was addressing the case, he did not do enough to treat.

Cardinal David recalled how President Doterti loved to wave a “book entitled” The September of Secrets “, which is alleged scandals in the Philippine Church, and how he would say,” Oh, these hypocrites. They do not listen to them. They do not practice what they practice.

But he adds that the defense is not the way it can win the church.

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