In Asia’s Catholic heartland, Filipinos remember ‘compassionate’ Pope who renewed their faith

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Updated 29 April 2025
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In Asia’s Catholic heartland, Filipinos remember ‘compassionate’ Pope who renewed their faith

Pope Francis wears a plastic poncho as he waves to well wishers after a mass in Tacloban on Jan. 17, 2015. (AFP)
  • Pontiff visited Philippines in 2015, in aftermath of deadly Super Typhoon Haiyan
  • His Manila mass that drew more than 6 million people was largest papal gathering in history

MANILA: The death of Pope Francis has stirred an outpouring of grief across the Philippines, as many remember his compassionate leadership during one of the nation’s darkest times.

The Argentine pontiff, leader of the Catholic Church since March 2013, died at his residence, Casa Santa Marta, in the Vatican on April 21. He was 88 years old.

In the Philippines, home to Asia’s largest Catholic population, the pope is adoringly referred to as “Lolo Kiko,” or Grandpa Kiko.

He left an indelible mark in the country after a historic four-day visit in January 2015, when he celebrated an open-air mass in Manila that drew more than 6 million devotees, making it the largest papal gathering in history.

But many among the Philippines’ 85 million Catholics were deeply moved by his visit to Tacloban City in central Philippines during the same trip, braving heavy rain to conduct a mass in memory of the more than 6,000 people who perished in Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

“When he visited Manila and Tacloban, especially after the devastation of (the) typhoon, it deeply touched the hearts of so many. He didn’t come as a distant leader, but as a father who wanted to personally console and strengthen us,” Alfredo Navarro III, a seminarian from the diocese of Balanga, told Arab News.

“Filipinos love Lolo Kiko so much because he has shown real concern for us. Not just in words, but in action. He has made it clear that he understands our struggles and is familiar with our culture.”

For Navarro, Pope Francis was a beacon of hope “in a world where it sometimes feels like God is absent because of wars, conflicts and so many struggles.”

“Watching Pope Francis live out the Gospel in such a simple yet powerful way made me realize even more deeply that God is truly present, even in the most broken parts of our world. Through him, I felt God’s love reaching out to me and to everyone,” he said.

“Because of Pope Francis, I feel a stronger calling to be a sign of that same love — to be more present to others, especially to those who are last, the least and the lost.”

World leaders and hundreds of thousands of people bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral at the Vatican on Saturday, where he was eulogized as a pope of the people.

Many young Filipinos took to social media to mourn his passing, honoring him as an inspiration and a figure who renewed their faith.

“I do not claim to be a model Catholic. I never was and I do not think I will ever be. But his words, his actions, the way he saw Christ in the last, the least and the lost was fuel to my faith. It was grace made real, alive and living,” Marion Bais Guerrero wrote on Facebook.

Filipino sociologist Athena Charanne Presto said on X that Pope Francis “made being Catholic less morally suffocating, less burdened by contradiction.”

“This is heartbreaking news for the faithful and for those like me who only slowly found their way to faith because someone at the helm reminded us that the Church could also be a place to breathe.”

In Pope Francis, Raymond Zabala saw a leader who touched the lives of many, even those who are not Catholics.

“He respects all people regardless of their religion or status and in the same manner people from other religions respect him as well. I know of some friends who are non-practicing Catholics who are deeply saddened by his passing,” he told Arab News.

“His passing reminded us of the values of kindness and compassion.”


Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff

Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff
Updated 05 May 2025
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Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff

Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan military said on Monday it had conducted a missile test with a range of 120 kilometers (75 miles), the second launch in two days as tensions with India have soared over disputed Kashmir.
New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on tourists on the Indian side of Kashmir last month, sparking a fresh stand-off between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
“The launch was aimed at ensuring the operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters, including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced accuracy,” the military said in a statement.
On Saturday, the military said it had tested a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 450 kilometers (280 miles).
It did not say where either of the tests took place.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was satisfied with the military’s “full preparedness for national defense.”
“The successful training launch clearly shows that Pakistan’s defense is in strong hands,” he said in a statement.
The missile training launch comes after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he has given his military “full operational freedom” to respond to the April 22 attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people.
Pakistan has denied any involvement and called for an independent probe.
Islamabad warned last week of an imminent air strike from its neighbor and has repeatedly made clear it will respond with force to any aggression by India.
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad — who have fought several wars over the disputed Kashmir region — to de-escalate.
The two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire for more than a week nine along the militarised Line of Control, the de facto border, according to Indian defense sources.
Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region of around 15 million people, is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed in full by both.
On the Pakistani side, emergency drills have been carried out on playing fields, residents have been told to stock up on food and medicine, and religious schools have been closed.
In Indian-run Kashmir, a vast manhunt seeking the gunmen continues across the territory, while those living along the frontier are moving further away — or cleaning out bunkers fearing conflict.
Sharif has postponed an official visit to Malaysia scheduled for Friday as tensions mounted, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday.
His office said the two sides spoke on Sunday night and that he “conveyed that he looked forward to paying an official visit to Malaysia later this year.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Islamabad on Monday for an official visit.
“Pakistan is presenting its case to friendly countries,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told reporters on a visit to Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Monday.


Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people

Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people
Updated 05 May 2025
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Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people

Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people
  • Francis was the first Latin American pope and the first from the order of the Jesuits, who are known for, among other things, their frontline work with society’s most marginalized groups

SIMOJOVEL: At a recent service in the remote southern Mexican community of Simojovel, Catholic and Mayan symbolism mingled at the altar as the deacon — his wife beside him — read the gospel in his native Tsotsil and recalled Pope Francis’ teachings: work together for human rights, justice and Mother Earth.
The scene in the small church in Mexico’s poorest state, Chiapas, conveyed much of the message Francis delivered during his 2016 trip to the region and his other visits to far-flung locales, including the Amazon, Congo and the jungles of Papua New Guinea.
It also illustrated what the world’s Indigenous Catholics don’t want to lose with the death of the first pontiff from the Southern Hemisphere: their relatively newfound voice in an institution that once debated whether “Indians” had souls while backing European powers as they plundered the Americas and Africa.
“We ask God that the work (Francis) did for us not be in vain,” Deacon Juan Pérez Gómez told his small congregation. “We ask you to choose a new pope, a new servant, who hopefully Lord thinks the same way.”
Empowering Indigenous believers
Francis was the first Latin American pope and the first from the order of the Jesuits, who are known for, among other things, their frontline work with society’s most marginalized groups. Although some feel Francis could have done more for their people during his 12 years as pontiff, Indigenous Catholics widely praise him for championing their causes, asking forgiveness for the church’s historical wrongs, and allowing them to incorporate aspects of their Native cultures into practicing their faith.
Among the places where his death has hit particularly hard are the lowlands of the Bolivian Amazon, which was home to Jesuit missions centuries ago that Francis praised for bringing Christianity and European-style education and economic organization to Indigenous people in a more humane way.
Marcial Fabricano, a 73-year-old leader of the Indigenous Mojeño people, remembers crying during Francis’ 2015 visit to Bolivia when the pope sought forgiveness for crimes the church committed against Indigenous people during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. Before the visit, his and other Indigenous groups sent Francis a message asking him to push the authorities to respect them.
“I believe that Pope Francis read our message and it moved him,” he said. “We are the last bastion of the missions. … We can’t be ignored.”
That South American tour came shortly after the publication of one of Francis’ most important encyclicals in which he called for a revolution to fix a “structurally perverse” global economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and turns the Earth into “immense pile of filth.” He also encouraged the church to support movements defending the territory of marginalized people and financing their initiatives.
“For the first time, (a pope) felt like us, thought like us and was our great ally,” said Anitalia Pijachi Kuyuedo, a Colombian member of the Okaira-Muina Murui people who participated in the 2019 Amazon Synod in Rome, where Francis showed interest in everything related to the Amazon, including the roles of women.
Pijachi Kuyuendo, 45, said she hopes the next pope also works closely with Native people. “With his death, we face huge challenges.”
A wider path for the church
Pérez Gómez, 57, is able to help tend to his small Tsotsil Catholic community in Mexico because the church restarted a deaconship program under Francis.
Facing a priest shortage in the 1960s, the church pushed the idea of deacons — married men who can perform some priestly rituals, such as baptisms, but not others, such as conducting Mass and hearing confession.
Samuel Ruiz, who spent four decades as bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas trying to improve the lives of Chiapas’ Indigenous people, saw deaconships as a way to promote the faith among them and form what he called a “Native church.” The deaconship initiative was such a hit in Ruiz’s diocese, though, that the Vatican halted it there in 2002, worried that Ruiz was using it as a step toward allowing married priests and female deacons. The halt was lifted in 2014.
Pérez Gómez, who waited 20 years before he was finally ordained a deacon in 2022, said he was inspired by Ruiz’s vision for a “Native church.” He said Francis reminded him of Ruiz, who died in 2011 and whom he credits with explaining the church’s true purpose to him as “liberator and evangelizer.”
“Francis also talked about liberation,” Pérez Gómez said, adding that he hopes the next pope shares that view.
New ways to celebrate Mass
It had been a half-century since the Vatican allowed Mass to be held in languages other than Latin when Francis visited Chiapas in 2016 and went a step further.
During a Mass that was the highlight of his visit, the Lord’s Prayer was sung in Tsotsil, readings were conducted in two other Mayan languages, Tseltal and Ch’ol, congregants danced while praying and Indigenous women stood at the altar.
Chiapas was a politically sensitive choice for the Pope’s visit, which wasn’t easily negotiated with the Vatican or Mexican government, according to Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, who was then bishop of San Cristobal. In 1994, it saw an armed uprising by the Zapatistas, who demanded rights for Indigenous peoples.
Getting the Vatican to allow Mayan rituals in the Mass was also tricky, but Arizmendi recalled that there was a helpful precedent: Congo.
In 1988, the Vatican approved the first cultural innovation in a Mass, the so-called Zaire rite, which is a source of national pride and continental inclusion, said the Rev. Abbé Paul Agustin Madimba, a priest in Kinshasa. “It shows the value the church gives Africans.”
Francis cited the Zaire rite, which allowed some local music and dance to be incorporated into Mass, to argue for such accommodations with other Indigenous Catholics around the world.
The decision was made not only to expand Catholicism, which is in retreat in many places, “but also a theological act of deep listening and conversion, where the church recognizes that it is not the owner of cultural truth, but rather servant of the gospel for each people,” said Arturo Lomelí, a Mexican social anthropologist.
It was the Vatican’s way to see Indigenous rituals not as “threats, but rather as legitimate ways to express and live the faith,” he said.
‘No longer objects’
On the Saturday after Francis’ death, Pérez Gómez stopped by a church in the town near his village to pick up the Communion wafers he would give out during his service the next day. Because he’s a deacon, he needs a priest to consecrate them for him ahead of time.
He and his wife, Crecencia López, don’t know who the next pope will be, but they hope he’s someone who shares Francis’ respect for Indigenous people. And they smile at the thought that perhaps one day, he could become a priest and she a deacon.
“We are no longer objects, but rather people” and that is thanks to God and his envoys, “jtatik Samuel (Ruiz)” and “jtatik Francis,” Pérez Gómez said, using a paternal term of great respect in Tseltal.


Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit

Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit
Updated 05 May 2025
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Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit

Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit
  • The military said that Russia also attacked Ukraine with two ballistic missiles that were not shot down

KYIV: Ukraine’s air defense units shot down 42 of 116 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that hit the regions of Sumy and Donetsk, the military said on Monday.
It said another 21 drones were lost but did not disclose the fate of the remaining 53, noting that Sumy and Donetsk “suffered as a result of the attack.”
The military said that Russia also attacked Ukraine with two ballistic missiles that were not shot down.
Civilian authorities in Ukraine did not immediately comment on the overnight attacks.


France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists

France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists
Updated 05 May 2025
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France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists

France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen host a Paris conference Monday to attract US researchers ready to relocate because of President Donald Trump’s policies.
EU commissioners, scientists and ministers for research from member countries will discuss, among other things, financial incentives at the gathering to lure disgruntled American scientists across the Atlantic.
Paris’s Sorbonne university is hosting the conference, called “Choose Europe for Science,” which is to close with speeches by Macron and von der Leyen.

 

Under Trump, universities and research facilities in the United States have come under increasing political and financial pressure, including from threats of massive federal funding cuts.
Research programs face closure, tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, while foreign students fear possible deportation for their political views.
The European Union hopes to offer an alternative for researchers and, by the same token, “defend our strategic interests and promote a universalist vision,” an official in Macron’s office told AFP.
The French president had already last month appealed to foreign, notably US, researchers to “choose France” and unveiled plans for a funding program to help universities and other research bodies cover the cost of bringing foreign scientists to France.

Shortly before, Aix Marseille University in the south of the country said its “Safe Place for Science” scheme received a flood of applicants after announcing in March it would open its doors to US scientists threatened by cuts.

 

Last week, France’s flagship scientific research center CNRS launched a new initiative aimed at attracting foreign researchers whose work is threatened and French researchers working abroad, some of whom “don’t want to live and raise their children in Trump’s United States,” according to CNRS President Antoine Petit.
An official in Macron’s office said Monday’s conference comes “at a time when academic freedoms are retreating and under threat in a number of cases and Europe is a continent of attractiveness.”
Experts say, however, that while EU countries can offer competitive research infrastructure and a high quality of life, research funding and researchers’ remuneration both lag far behind US levels.
But CNRS’s Petit said last week he hoped that the pay gap will seem less significant once the lower cost of education and health, and more generous social benefits are taken into account.
Macron’s office said France and the EU are targeting researchers in a number of specific sectors, including health, climate, biodiversity, artificial intelligence and space.
 


Former Vice President Pence defends US Constitution after getting Profile in Courage Award

Former Vice President Pence defends US Constitution after getting Profile in Courage Award
Updated 05 May 2025
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Former Vice President Pence defends US Constitution after getting Profile in Courage Award

Former Vice President Pence defends US Constitution after getting Profile in Courage Award
  • Pence received the award for his refusal to go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election
  • In his acceptance, Pence said the Constitution is "what binds us across time and generations. .... It’s what makes us one people.”

BOSTON: Former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday repeatedly invoked the Constitution and said it is what “binds us all together” after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
Pence received the award for his refusal to go along with President Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing the 2020 election. The award recognizes Pence “for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021,” the JFK Library Foundation said.
“To forge a future together, we have to find common ground,” Pence said. “I hope in some small way my presence here tonight is a reminder that whatever differences we may have as Americans, the Constitution is the common ground on which we stand. It’s what binds us across time and generations. .... It’s what makes us one people.”
His comments came hours after an interview with Trump aired in which he was asked whether US citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was noncommittal.
“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. It was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.
Pence never mentioned Trump during his 10-minute speech but made several references to the Trump administration.

Referencing what he called “these divided times, in these anxious days,” he acknowledged that he probably had differences with the Democrats in the room but also with his own Republican Party “on spending, tariffs and my belief that America is the leader of the free world and must stand with Ukraine until the Russian invasion is repelled and a just and lasting peace is secured.”
Trump pressured Pence to reject election results from swing states where the Republican president falsely claimed the vote was marred by fraud. Pence refused, saying he lacked such authority. When a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, some chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence.” Pence was whisked away by Secret Service agents, narrowly avoiding a confrontation with the rioters.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify,” Trump wrote at the time on X, formerly Twitter, as rioters moved through the Capitol and Pence was in hiding with his family, aides and security detail inside the building.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Getty Images via AFP/File)

Pence rejected the Secret Service’s advice that he leave the Capitol, staying to continue the ceremonial election certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential victory once rioters were cleared.
In describing his role, Pence told the audience that “by God’s grace I did my duty that day to support the peaceful transfer of power under the Constitution of the United States of America.”
The Profile in Courage Award, named for a book Kennedy published in 1957 before he became president, honors public officials who take principled stands despite the potential political or personal consequences. Previous recipients of the award include former Presidents Barack Obama, George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford.
Pence has emerged as one of the few Republicans willing to take on the Trump administration.
His political action group, Advancing American Freedom, campaigned against the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the nation’s health agencies. He’s delivered speeches urging the president to stand with longtime foreign allies and posted an article he penned more than a decade ago on the limits of presidential power after Trump claimed that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”