RP Catholic leaders warn vs electing ‘liberal’ pope

As the Vatican prepared to select a successor to Pope John Paul II, church leaders in the Philippines, Asia’s largest Roman Catholic nation, urged the College of Cardinals not to elect a "liberal" pontiff.

The Filipino Church said that the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics must uphold Church doctrine on such issues as marriage, abortion, birth control and priesthood for women.

The Philippines is one of few countries in the world where the majority of Catholics are in broad agreement with the Vatican in its opposition to abortion, artificial contraceptives and the ordination of women priests, among other contentious issues besetting the religion in the West.

In this Southeast Asian former Spanish colony, abortion and divorce are against the law, and condoms and birth control pills are widely unpopular.

"If the pope is a liberal it is against the law of God," said Ramon Arguelles, the archbishop of Lipa City in Batangas.

"Liberalism is a no-no because it is anti-God, so you cannot have a pope that is anti-God," he told AFP in an interview.

"You must have a pope who can interpret very well the laws of God and the laws of nature," Argeulles said.

Some 68 million of the Philippines’ 84-million-strong population are baptized Catholics. Two Filipino cardinals are eligible to vote for the next one, though one of them, retired Manila archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin, has said he will not travel to Rome due to illness.

Television evangelist Mike Velarde, leader of the Catholic lay movement El Shaddai that claims 10 million members, said his group wanted the next pope to follow a similarly conservative direction to Pope John Paul II.

In a nationwide survey released this week, a majority of the people listed Pope John Paul, who died last weekend, as the person they most trusted.

The question of a liberal pope is "not even worthy of asking, especially if by liberal you mean that the next pope will allow abortion, use of contraceptives, or divorce," Arguelles said.

"This is against the law of God. The pope can’t go against the law of God," he said.

Father Anton Pascual, of the Manila archdiocese’s ministry for social diocese, said the next pope should remain conservative on issues of human life, marriage, and reproduction to adhere to the laws of God.

"There are issues on which we have to be conservative, like abortion, divorce and contraception, because this involves life," the priest said.

However, on matters involving social and human rights, poverty and ecology, the next pontiff should be "progressive" since these issues call for such an approach, he said.

"The best spirituality is balance. The Church acting on the issues (and) concerns while keeping fidelity to Jesus Christ and to the teaching of the Church — that is important," Pascual said. — AFP