Pray to save us from crimes

The Lenten period is the time of the year when most of us do our reflections in life. As Christendom observes Holy Week, we usually get a dose of spiritual recollections and religious teachings to remind us of our being Catholics.

With an estimated 94 million people to date, about 80 percent of our country’s population are Catholics, or roughly 75.2 million. By way of comparison, the Philippines has the third biggest Catholic population after Brazil and Mexico. But would you believe we have only three Cardinals up to now?

As early as November 2007, Sen. Joker Arroyo had raised this issue after Pope Benedict XVI elevated 23 new Cardinals at that time. There was not one Filipino among them. When Joker delivered a privilege speech to raise this concern we have three Cardinals, namely, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales, Archbishops Ricardo Vidal of Cebu, and Jose Sanchez who is assigned at the Vatican in Rome, Italy.

Since then, Cardinals Vidal and Sanchez have retired already one after the other, and the only one still in active duty is Archbishop Rosales. Actually, Joker made this privilege speech after the entire Senators adopted unanimously Senate Resolution No. 33 that expressed their concern on the “grossly disproportionate” number of Filipino Cardinals to the 73 million Catholic population in the Philippines. The Senate Resolution requested the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines to convey the sentiment of the Senate to the Vatican.

The Apostolic Nuncio — who is the official representative of the Holy See to the Philippines — is Archbishop Edward Joseph Adams. The Senate Secretariat forwarded an official copy of Joker’s privilege speech to the Apostolic Nunciature after the Senator noted there was no official response on the Senate Resolution.

To its credit, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) acknowledged the Senate Resolution. Archbishop Rosales wrote Joker a letter to assuage the Senator that “it is not the desire of the Holy See to ignore the vast majority of Catholics in our country in having only three Filipino Cardinals.”

On Nov. 17 last year, or three years after, Joker stood up anew at the Senate halls to reiterate the same concern. Joker took the occasion to remind the Papal Nuncio about it because the College of Cardinals was scheduled to meet at the Vatican two days from that time. “We have to put on record that a concern of the Senate on temporal matter was ignored by the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See,” Joker told his colleagues at the august chamber.

Incidentally, Archbishop Adams is ending his tour of duty in the Philippines as he is scheduled to leave next month and is reportedly given a new posting in Greece. There is no word yet from the Vatican as to who would replace him here.

“Having been ignored by the Papal Nuncio,” Joker told me, he asked our permanent representative to the World Trade Organization Dondie Teehankee who holds office in a nearby European city to get enlightenment from Cardinal Sanchez who is based at the Vatican.

Cardinal Sanchez’ explanation was simple and fortright, Joker cited. The number of Cardinals depends upon the number of priests. In short, the more priests we have, then we will have more dioceses and therefore we shall have more Cardinals. Therefore, it has nothing to do with the size of the Catholic population in our country.

From the records of the Catholic statistics, we have only 7,335 priests. From rough estimates of the CBCP, we have one priest for every 30,000 Catholic. We have 2,909 parishes and 86 dioceses.  

Ergo, the solution is for us to produce more priests, Joker conceded. If I may interest the Senator, our parish welcomed the recent ordination of Fr. William Ramos. Actually, Fr. Ramos considers himself a late bloomer priest when he realized he wanted to pursue priesthood as a vocation after spending time as a seaman. At least, we still have men ready to sacrifice and fill the spiritual needs of our country.

And speaking of our spiritual needs, Archbishop Rosales instructed parish priests to conduct more confessions that seasonally go up during the Holy Week.

Meanwhile, instead of getting spiritual reminders as we observe the Lenten season, we have been bombarded with police warnings and other precautionary advices from law enforcement and other government authorities.

Don’t get me wrong. These police reminders are most welcome to avoid becoming hapless victims of criminals lurking in our midst. There is no Holy Week for these evildoers. These criminals are ready to pounce and take advantage of this sacred period in our religious life.

I was once myself a victim of a snatching incident on a Maundy Thursday while we were doing our Visita Iglesia several years ago. We were just coming out from the Espiritu Santo church in Sta. Cruz, Manila when a young man emerged out of nowhere and snatched my gold cross necklace and ran away through a dark, long alley.

By way of sharing experiences, I always include in my daily prayers for God to take care of the health and wellbeing of my loved ones. I earnestly ask Divine guidance to keep my loved ones in the right path, watch over them to be safe and shield them from any fatal accidents.

With the spate of heinous crimes happening in our country which seemingly continue unabated, I have added in my daily prayer to God Almighty to protect us from these criminals. As a mother, I dread any violent crime happening to my children or any member of my family for that matter.

Nobody feels safe anymore. The carjacking incident involving actress Pilar Pilapil last week is the latest source of fear on how bold these criminals have become. The actress got stabbed seven times and beaten up by two men who forcibly took the car she was driving. Thank God, she escaped further harm by pretending to be dead. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of this dastardly crime are still on the loose.

While we worry about these heinous to petty crimes taking place even in the most unexpected places, we do not realize that we have gradually become paranoid. But of course, we should not allow our fears to rule us. We must be vigilant and stay away from potential danger and heed these police reminders. And the rest, we could draw spiritual strength through prayers to save us from crimes.