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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Roperos: Papal mystique
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
THE news of the death of Pope John Paul II came to me at about four in the morning last Sunday, when I was awakened by a phone call from my wife Lolit in Jersey City. She said the pope has just died. And I told her that we had almost the whole of Saturday spent glued to the CNN broadcast. But I guess, our whole house on Morales St. went to sleep past midnight. I hurried to the living room to switch on the TV on CNN again. Yes, there it was, the relentless and tireless coverage of the last hours of the global pope.
When I was a kid in knee pants and studying catechism in the parish church on weekends, the mere mention of the Santo Papa among our teenage teachers would evoke a kind of mystique about the person who lived in distant Tome. The mere mention of Santo Papa sort of transported us to a distant land called Roma. To our mind, the Santo Papa is the man who stood between us children and the devil. At least that is what we understood from our teachers who taught us how to say the Our Father and Hail Mary.
Coming from a strictly religious family as was most families in our town were, there was no escaping the weekend catechism classes held in the empty stone parish church built early at the turn of the 20th century. While we would rather have our weekend spent in the nearby sea, we could not do so since our mothers would herd us with a coconut midrib whip to the church as soon as the bells sounded for the eight o’clock Saturday class or the two to four o‘clock Sunday afternoon session. In summer, like now, it was daily classes.
Truth to tell, Catholicism has practically permeated all facets of most Catholic Filipino families’ life. It practically dictates the schedule of everyone’s day in the towns. I recall that my grandfather used to wake us at four in the morning to say the novena of whatever it was the dominant saint of the day.
Yes, Tuesdays—if I recall correctly—sa San Antonio, the patron saint of those who lost something. And I would get me a pile of pillows up to my chin so I could go on sleeping while the prayers went on.
In fact, my late mother assigned a saint to all her children. I think my younger brother Nerius had Saint Anthony. I had San Vicente, and Thursday was his day of worship. And my mother would ask me to go to church to light a candle before the image of Saint Vincent. I forgot now what saint my other brother, the late Cesar, was assigned to. It was perhaps Saint Francis of Assisi, our town’s patron saint. My sisters also had their women saints. And each year, while we were growing up, we had the nine-day novena for our saint.
It was a way of life that we disliked, but not really hated. How could one hate his or her faith and his or her saint when it was made clear to us that the alternative is the devil? But the Santo Papa had always evoked in me a mystique of someone who is idolized as a man of daeep faith. At a time in my childhood when the idea of a pope dwelt only in the mind, never a tangible and perceptible reality, the notion invariably carried a kind of mystery surrounding the idea. To a young boy’s mind, it is an image that is akin to Jesus Christ.
But the mystique around the Santo Papa is now gone. Our awe and respect for Pope John Paul II is real and tangible, as we had watched him travel through many countries, reportedly 129 in all, in 104 foreign visits, including twice to the Philippines. The modern information technology has banished the papal mystique, and in its stead a perceptible reality that reinforced one’s faith and strengthen one’s belief. It is there you can see the pope and he represents more than a billion people who believe in the existence of God.
No longer would anyone of us say that to see is to believe. One’s belief in his creator is as concrete as his belief in his own existence. When a billion people around the globe tells you that God exist, who are you in faith that would belie it? You alone among a billion would have the gumption to say you don’t believe? When a man like Pope John Paul II lives and dies as person of the faith, respected and revered the world over even by those who do not share in his Catholic belief, one would not dare belittle the faith he stands for.
When I was just a kid in knee pants, I thought of the pope as someone no longer human but more like the saints whose image we looked up to in the altar of our church. It was no longer so with Pope John Paul II. He was as real and genuine a person of the faith, and as human as you and me. Could the Catholic world produce another pope like him?
(April 5, 2005 issue)
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