When the Vatican first announced that Pope Francis would be coming to the Philippines, the reason it gave was that the Pontiff wanted to be with the victims of supertyphoon Yolanda. So many things have changed since then. The original intention of the pope in visiting the Philippines has been hijacked by influential people in Manila. Now the pope will be spending more time in Manila and only a few hours in Tacloban, which bore the brunt of the strongest typhoon the world has ever seen.
But a new typhoon named Ruby, whose strength now approximates that of Yolanda, is now bearing down on the Philippines and is likely to hit tomorrow or the next day the very same areas that were ravaged by Yolanda. If Ruby hits these areas spot on, one can only shudder to think of the consequences. Many of the people there have not fully recovered. Many are still living in tents.
If another tragedy revisits these areas, the pope will have an even more compelling reason to do what he reportedly wanted to do in the first place -- which is to be with the typhoon victims before his plans eventually got hijacked. Typhoons can easily be explained scientifically. But I have a nagging suspicion that Ruby is a divine reminder, an admonition from God, for greedy influence peddlers and power brokers to keep their hands off spiritual and pastoral matters.
The number of Yolanda victims is staggering. In fact, Noynoy Aquino ordered the casualty count stopped shortly after sacking a regional police official for estimating the toll to hit 10,000. The families these victims left behind have mostly been abandoned by their own government, grown complacent by the fact that they are now in the care of foreign volunteers and corporate do-gooders who did not give up caring and providing.
These victims, spread all over the Visayas in their tens of thousands, could have used a little comfort provided by the mere presence of the pope. Having the pope in their midst would have assuaged, however fleetingly, the material and emotional hunger that victims of any tragedy are bound to feel. Little did the victims know that even in such a humble aspiration, they would be frustrated by those who wanted the pope for themselves, if only for their selfies.
But now, if Ruby does strike land, and stikes where the Yolanda victims are, the pope might be forced to spend more time with them. He might even realize the folly of allowing himself and his original plans to be hijacked by those who, in never having had the misfortune to come face to face with Yolanda, will never get to understand what tragedy is like in its rawest sense.
That Ruby would be packing nearly the same wallop as Yolanda, that it would be threatening roughly the same places it ravaged in 2013, that it is expected to hit roughly a month after the first anniversary of Yolanda, are just too uncanny to be mere coincidences. Call me a superstitious fool. Label me as a romantic idiot. But I do believe God is trying to say something, and it has something to do with the original intent of the papal visit in 2015.
So, what should happen when the pope visits in 2015, granting Ruby does strike roughly the same places that Yolanda did, and with roughly the same force? This is not to say that I want these things to happen just to prove a point. There is nothing I would hate to happen than for Ruby to become a Yolanda repeat. I have many friends and relations in these areas and I pray to God they would be spared, or that Ruby would just veer safely away at the last moment.
But what if it did? What if most of the current forecasts bear out accurate? It will be a double whammy for the original Yolanda victims. And if the pope truly wanted to be with the Yolanda victims as initially announced, then he should spend more time with them now. There is no more reason for him to just be with them for a few hours.
Of course nobody is wiser than the pope. He would not be pope if he wasn't blessed with great wisdom. Still I hope he would see that God is not pleased by the hijacking of his original plan to be with the Yolanda victims. That a new typhoon is threatening them could be God's way of calling attention to their plight, how their own government has neglected them, and how they could use his presence to paddle away from the pit of despair to which they have descended.
I would even pray that the pope scrap all his other activities other than that which brings him closer to the typhoon victims. His activities in Manila are mostly for people who, in one way or another, have far better chances of seing the pope at some other time and in some other place, most probably in the Vatican. If they really want to see the pope, they can very well afford to be where he is at any given time.
I do not see why he must meet with privileged families in the airconditioned comforts of the Mall of Asia when there are more families so deserving of his presence in Tacloban, families who otherwise would have no means to even get a glimpse of him in their lifetime. I do not see why he has to meet with selected members of the clergy in an exclusive Mass when members of the clergy are always known to be resourceful enough to afford a trip to Rome.
All of these are, of course, personal musings that have neither any scientific leg to stand on nor any religious qualification to help bear out. And if Ruby does veer away and spare Filipinos, especially the old Yolanda victims, the pain and agony of another tragedy, then I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. If only for that, I do hope I am very very wrong.