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Saturday, April 09, 2005
Some 500T Pinoys bid adieu to pope
MANILA -- Over half a million Filipinos joined a prayer vigil and mass for the late Pope John Paul II at the Rizal Park in Manila Friday simultaneous with funeral rites for him at the Vatican.
Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iniguez and Bishop Teodoro Bacani said the attendance of this many Filipinos in the vigil for John Paul II shows "a strong faith in the Lord".
"We are celebrating a life that has been taken away from our midst but given to use for 84 years and will continue to guide us for years to come. That is the life of Pope John Paul II," said Bishop Bacani.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in a CNN interview aired Friday (RP time), said the pope served as her inspiration when she bolted the administration of then President Joseph Estrada as his vice president and led a peaceful people's uprising in January 2001 that catapulted her to the presidency.
Bacani, a spiritual adviser of the charismatic group El Shaddai, said the pope's life should also serve as an inspiration to the faithful on how to live their life and love the Lord.
"We will be fulfilled not by filling ourselves with material things but by giving ourselves, and the way to human growth and maturity is not by grabbing but by giving, not through accumulating but through sharing," Bacani added.
Arroyo said when interviewed by Cable News Network (CNN) that the pontiff also influenced some of the policies that her administration had adopted and several stands she had taken on issues ranging from the death penalty to population control.
She said the pope, whom she has met twice at the Vatican, "was very much concerned with peace and public morality."
Arroyo first visited the pope in October 2000 when she was still vice president and concurrent social welfare secretary of the Estrada administration, and in September 2003 or two years after she succeeded Estrada.
She said it was through those meetings that she was able to make some big decisions like in 2000 when she met with the pope while impeachment proceedings were ongoing against Estrada. It was after her meeting with the pope that she decided to resign as social welfare secretary.
"It was after my conversation with the Pope that I finally found the courage or conviction that I should make a break and join the bloodless revolution," Arroyo said.
"The pope had a very keen sense of understanding of what was happening in the Philippines and he was very encouraging towards me, with regard to my taking steps to make sure that I would do what I could do in order to promote morality in Philippine society," she added.
Iñiguez, meanwhile, said the pope's life is the "supreme witness to his faith" which should be followed and imitated by the faithful because even in death, the pope has proven his true faith and devotion to the Lord.
El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde called on Filipinos to continue defending life since this is what John Paul II had advocated.
"Let me invite you to accept Pope John Paul II's challenge for us not to be afraid to defend life at all cost. For this is the Lord Jesus Christ's word," Velarde said.
Police Chief Superintendent Pedro Bulaong of the Western Police District (WPD) estimated the crowd in Rizal Park at more than 500,000.
He said about 600 policemen were deployed to secure the park.
Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales presided over the mass and in his homily he remembered the works of the late John Paul II as well as his devotion to the Catholic Church and to the Lord. (MSN/With JMR)
(April 9, 2005 issue)
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