HIS Holiness Pope Francis will make an apostolic and state visit to the Philippines from January 15 to 19, 2015, and it will have for its theme “Mercy and Compassion.” The pope will visit the Philippines primarily to comfort Filipinos devastated by the typhoons and earthquakes that hit the Visayas in 2013.
According to the official web site Papalvisit.ph, Pope Francis will bring a message of mercy and compassion to at least 11 different venues—and, according to event-management estimates, to millions of people—in the province of Leyte and Metro Manila. This visit recalls what Jesus did in the Gospel of Matthew. In Chapter 9, Verse 36, it is written that Jesus, after “seeing the people, felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.”
So, too, the pope who, like a good shepherd, saw the suffering of his flock during and after the calamities. He felt compassion and will arrive in the country bringing “the joy of the gospel” to revive our “drooping spirit” and to encourage us to greener pastures, as exhorted in Psalm 23 which also challenges the faithful to imitate Christ, the one and only Good Shepherd, who is the alpha and omega of mercy and compassion.
Said Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines President and Lingayen Dagupan Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas: “Our compassionate shepherd comes to show his deep concern for our people who have gone through devastating calamities, especially in the Visayas. He comes to confirm us in our faith as we face the challenges of witnessing the joy of the Gospel in the midst of our trials. This is an eloquent way of showing mercy and compassion.”
Papalvisit.ph further explains. “In Evangelii Gaudium 114, Pope Francis proclaims that ‘the Church must be a place of mercy freely given, where everyone can feel encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel.’ Thus, his visit is primarily to bring Christ’s compassion to our suffering people still struggling to rise from the devastations wrought by the earthquakes and the typhoon that hit the Visayas last year.”
The spotlight will not be on the person of the pope but on the devastated communities visited by such calamities, including Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan), the strongest typhoon on record whose destructive path displaced 4 million people and flattened a million homes, according to Papalvisit.ph.
Aside from the primary mission, a secondary purpose has also been elucidated. Pope Francis will visit the Philippines to meet and greet the people, including religious leaders.
THE ITINERARY
Pope Francis is expected to arrive at Villamor Air Base in Manila from Sri Lanka via a Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight past 5 pm on January 15.
After an official welcome with Papal Nuncio Giuseppe Pinto, the pope will go on a motorcade to his official residence in the Philippines. The following morning, January 16, Pope Francis will be officially welcomed by President Aquino at Malacañan Palace where the pope will also meet Philippine authorities and members of the diplomatic corps. This will most likely occur in the Rizal Ceremonial Hall of the presidential residence. After the Palace reception, Pope Francis will go on a motorcade to the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, better known as the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros, for a Mass with bishops, priests, and women and men religious. Later, he will have a close encounter with lay families at the Arena in Mall of Asia in Pasay City.
The next day, January 17, the pope will depart by plane for an 8:15 am flight for Tacloban. Shortly after his arrival at 9:30 am, the pope will celebrate Mass at the Archdiocese of Palo near the Tacloban International Airport in Leyte Province, Eastern Visayas. He will have lunch with the poor and survivors of natural calamities at the residence of the archbishop of Palo. In what would be a poignant high point of his apostolic journey to the Philippines, the pope is expected to pray at the mass grave of those who died in the massive devastation wrought by Yolanda. He will light a candle and offer his personal prayers.
At 3 pm, he will bless the Pope Francis Center for the Poor in Palo and visit the Cathedral of Our Lord’s Transfiguration (Palo Cathedral) to meet with priests, seminarians, and women and men religious, as well as other calamity survivors, persons with disabilities, orphans and the elderly.
The Pope Francis Center for the Poor will house an orphanage, a home for the aged, and a dispensary to be run and maintained by the Kkottoongnae Brothers and Sisters of Jesus, a South Korean religious congregation.
At 5 pm, the pope will depart by plane for Manila where the next day, January 18, Sunday, he will host a brief morning meeting with religious leaders of the Philippines at the Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST). At 10:30 am, he will have a face-to-face with the youth at the sports field of UST.
In the afternoon, he will go on a motorcade for a concluding Mass at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal (Luneta) Park at 3:30 pm.
Pope Francis will leave for Rome on January 19 after a 9:45 am leave-taking ceremony at the Presidential Pavilion of Villamor Air Base in Manila. He is scheduled to arrive back in Rome by 5:40 pm, Philippine time.
GOD IN THE DETAILS
Preparations for the pope’s four-day visit in the Philippines include a massive information drive and logistics effort, as well as other surprising details including the minting of P500 and P50 commemorative coins by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the launch of the Papal Visit app, now available for both iOS and Android devices.
The Papal Visit app was made through the efforts of Digital Media Ph and is linked to the papal Twitter handle (@pontifex), as well as to the official papal visit web site, Papalvisit.ph, and various social-media accounts. Meanwhile, two open Popemobiles, one each for Manila and Leyte, have been specially prepared to allow easy access to the people at any time during his motorcades. The Popemobiles are not bulletproof, to show that the Church is accessible and open. The vehicles will allow the pope to get on and off easily to meet with the crowds.
Speaking more on transportation, PAL will fly the pope to and from Manila. The airline said it will draw from its experience as the official carrier of Pope John Paul II for his Philippine visits in 1981 and 1995. The company, however, did not specify details and other flight modifications for the visit of Pope Francis except to say that PAL’s flights to and from Tacloban City are suspended on January 17 during Pope Francis’s visit.
Therefore, passengers who have booked flights on the said date were advised to rebook their tickets as Tacloban airport will be closed to all commercial flights. The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines has issued a notice to all airlines, suspending all airline operations at Tacloban on January 17 for security reasons.
PERSONAL PREPARATIONS
Christians from all walks of life are urged to prepare spiritually for the pope’s upcoming visit. They are to make an act of mercy everyday, such as giving food to the hungry, helping build homes for disaster victims, and visiting prisoners or patients in the charity ward of hospitals, drug rehabilitation centers, homes for the elderly, and orphanages.
Villegas said, “Let us make mercy our national identity. Trust in God’s mercy is part and parcel of our traditional Filipino Christian culture. Let us make the practice of mercy our gift to the pope when he comes to visit us.” In addition, religious authorities have set up reminders of behavior during the visit. The faithful is urged to dress modestly, maintain peace and order, and refrain from pushing and shoving during Masses and other events.
Other gentle reminders include actively taking part in Masses by singing and responding; helping maintain peace and order; heeding authorities’ instructions, particularly when it comes to crowd control, security and public health; being aware of the location of first-aid stations and portalets; keeping venues clean and litter-free; respecting public property; following traffic rules near venues; keeping an eye on children at all times, and giving the same attention to elderly and people with disabilities; and following instructions and respecting rules to be placed by authorities.
Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle said: “The world is one with us in this historic visit of Pope Francis to our country.”
The former chemical technician and nightclub bouncer known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio has brought in fresh blood to the Vatican while recently lambasting publicly power-hungry princes of the church, namely the cardinals and bishops who run the Catholic Church’s Rome headquarters. Due to his invention of a new easy style of communication, Pope Francis is now considered one of the most popular pontiffs of modern times, even more popular than the recently sainted Pope John Paul II.