“SEE, THEY used the money to contribute to the yellows. Look at what happened. We don’t have a bishop now. Don’t you know? He was removed. We were given a caretaker now who is a priest. Manila doesn’t have a bishop.”
Spite spewed out of the mouth of President Duterte at the departure of Cardinal Luiz Antonio Tagle from his Manila See to take the post of prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples at the Vatican.
Duterte doing it, in all places, at the 2020 General Assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines. So, where’s the connect?
A moment of luminous grace that should have swelled the pride of the Filipino nation – a countryman in the highest echelons of the Vatican, bestowed with the eminence of the post dubbed as the “red pope” for the considerable power in the Roman Curia and the appointment of bishops in mission lands.
But no, Duterte could only cast the malevolent eye upon such benediction.
“The Pope got mad because he meddled with politics. That’s the truth. That’s why we were given an officer in charge. We don’t have a bishop. Tagle was out. He was investigated. That’s an open secret.” So avouched Duterte the impeccability, if not the infallibility, of his statement, as though coming from the very gospels.
That was on March 10.
Yesterday, May 1, on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Pope Francis elevated Tagle to the order of cardinal-bishop, the highest order in the College of Cardinals.
Bring Cardinal-Bishop of San Felice da Cantalice a Centocelle has made Tagle “equal in all respects to those Cardinals with suburbicarian Churches.”
Explained the Vatican: Cardinal bishops hold jurisdiction over a church in a suburb of Rome, while working in departments of the Roman Curia, the central administration of the church.
Adding: It is also from the ranks of cardinal bishops that the Dean of College of Cardinals is elected. The dean presides at the conclave in the case of “sede vacante,” a period when there is no pope.
What position of pre-eminence in the universal Church the Filipino now holds!
Farthest from being “removed” from the Manila archdiocese and “investigated” by the Vatican as claimed infamously by Duterte, Cardinal Tagle is averitable “papabile” now.
Wonder what the president will have to say to this?
Curse the Pope again?
