THE STATE and pastoral visit of Pope Francis on January 15 to 19 was an affair of  unprecedented levels. Thousands lined the streets as the Pontiff made his way around Manila and Tacloban. Despite the tropical storm that dumped rains through most of the visit, all events were jampacked, with some coming from across the nation for a momentary glimpse of the pope. To cap it all off, more than six million attended the Mass at Quirino Grandstand on January 18—the largest papal event in history.

Logistics was also part of the event’s success. The police, armed forces, and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, were all lauded for maintaining public security. Crime went down in the country’s capital, with the Philippine National Police reporting only nine incidents—five robbery cases, two cases of theft and two cases of illegal firearm possessions—in the area.

Creating a distinct mark

The visit was the fourth of its kind since Paul VI’s sojourn in 1970. Francis is also the third pope to set foot in the country, following John Paul II’s visits in 1981 and 1995.

Pope Francis’ Mass at Quirino Grandstand broke the world record set by the last Papal Mass in the country. Presided by John Paul II, the culminating Mass of the 1995 visit drew one or two million less than this year’s Mass.

More than the difference in figures, Development Studies Director Jayeel Cornelio, PhD­, sees the visit’s context as a main point of distinction between this papal visit and the preceding ones. Paul VI had his stay prior to the declaration of Martial Law, when the country was threatened by Communist insurgency. John Paul II’s first visit was for the beatification of St. Lorenzo Ruiz and the second was in celebration of World Youth Day. Cornelio sees today’s situation as one where the Philippines is “a new center of power for Christianity.”

Stephanie Ann Puen, assistant instructor from the Theology Department, likewise believes that a different “landscape” exists, particularly with social media that has allowed more to be aware of the pope’s work.

She also notes, more importantly, what sets Pope Francis apart from his predecessors is his persona. Puen explains that the pontiff, having roots in Argentina, can closely relate with a society with similar Spanish influences.

Puen has also seen the pope as “more personal,” sensitive to the people’s needs, as illustrated in his decision to “deliver a message from the heart” instead of following his script. “Pope Francis was [really] able to strike a chord with the people in a very different, a more intimate and a more personal way compared to John Paul,” she adds.

A different church

Pope Francis also visited a nation that has grappled with its Catholic identity under a leadership that has faced scandals in the 20 years since the last papal visit. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), in particular, has faced backlash for alleged corruption and involvement with state matters.

Much of this discontent surfaced during the divisive battle for the passage of the Reproductive Health (RH) Act of 2012. President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, a keen RH supporter, was heavily criticized and even allegedly threatened with excommunication by the CBCP. The clash also turned political, as priests exhorted the faithful to vote against pro-RH candidates in the 2013 senatorial elections.

In another divisive incident, Church officials—dubbed by the media as the “Pajero bishops”—were accused of receiving luxury vehicles bought with Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office funds in 2011. These vehicles were said to be endorsed by then-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in exchange for electoral support.

The CBCP has also vocally opposed so-called “DEATH” bills or “Divorce, Euthanasia, Total Reproductive Health, and Homosexuality through same-sex marriage,” dubbing these as “anti-family and anti-life” and vowing all-out opposition.

These actions have been decried by many. A survey by CBCP’s Episcopal Commission on Youth in 2013 showed that more than half of Filipino Catholic youths disagree with the “involvement of the Catholic hierarchy on political issues,” according to an article by Rappler. Disagreement among Catholics, according to Ateneo de Davao University President Joel Tabora, SJ in a blog post published on 2013, results from perceived “holier-than-thou discourse, the theological bullying [and] the magisterial declarations” during controversies such as the RH bill.

While it may be the institution’s role to be conservative on such issues, Cornelio believes that “influential figures in the Church have done so in a way that alienated many people,” thus weakening itself in the past decade.

“The Church is seen as a very arrogant institution,” Cornelio says. He believes that the pope’s arrival in the country is very appropriate “at a time in which the Philippines is a broken society, whose main Church is also broken.”

Responding to new needs

Social Weather Stations’ (SWS) figures show an apparent decline in the Catholic faith, with weekly church attendance falling from 64% in July 1991 to about 37% in February 2013. Because of this, the “religiosity” of the Filipino Catholic has been questioned, seeing the numbers as representative of a decrease in Catholic belief.

Puen, however, sees this not as a result of waning faith but because of “a different way of understanding what faith means.” She explains that people now want to understand and be critical of ideas, rather than simply following blindly. According to her, people have become more aware of the existence of diversity, resulting in the need to make complex issues comprehensible in light of present contexts.

Natasha Dugan, a member of the Ateneo College Ministry Group, shares the same sentiment, saying, “We all are in the same context of modernization, yet our practices of religious faith are also not the same.”

Cornelio also refutes the idea of a decline in faith. Citing attendance in feast days and in organizations such as Youth for Christ, he states that people are “still believing in God [and] still praying. Thus, while Church attendance may be on a decline, it doesn’t necessarily mean that [people] are losing the faith.”

He adds that it is “very clear” that Filipinos form a religious society. However, he says that they tend to become “alienated from the very institution” of the Catholic Church, which “they feel is very detached from the realities of everyday life of the poor, of the divorced woman, of the homosexual, of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender).”

Puen sees the Church’s need to change its way of evangelizing. She worries that if some priests continue to “break people from the pulpit,” and blatantly condemn churchgoers, this will indeed “alienate” people from the institution.

Core competencies

Despite these issues, Dary Dacanay, an instructor from the Theology Department, believes in a “bright future” for the Catholic Church.

Dacanay says that, while the Church has remained firm in its teachings on sensitive issues such as contraception and divorce, the pope “is trying to bring the Church closer to people,” and is thus open to discourse.

Cornelio, however, has a different take on the matter and sees the Catholic Church here at a “crossroads,” with a pressing need for it to “rethink in a manner of introspection [on] whether it can engage in its issues effectively.”

“If it continues in the same path as it has taken in the previous decade, RH law as exemplary of that path, it’s bound to lose more confidence,” he says, noting that the SWS figures, while not necessarily reflective of the state of faith, should start “provoking some rethinking.”

Ultimately, Cornelio sees that a reconsideration of core competencies is in order. “What is [the Church’s] core advantage [and] core business? It’s the cura—care, cure,” he says. “Maybe the core business has to be taken care of first. The care of the soul, more than the care of macrosocial issues.”

By Janella H. Paris

ON OCTOBER 15, 2014, 100 days before Pope Francis’ arrival in the Philippines, Caritas Manila, a non-profit Catholic organization, launched the “Pope Merchandise Campaign,” in which the organization encouraged Catholics to purchase their Pope-themed products.

The aim of the campaign, according to Caritas Manila Executive Director Fr. Anton Pascual, was not only to raise money for the five-day visit’s budget but also to raise awareness of the pope and his advocacies, and raise funds for the poor.

Taking part in the campaign, Radyo Veritas, a Catholic radio station and one of Caritas Manila’s partners, launched an online store the following month. The radio station said this was done to cater not only to “tech-savvy” Filipinos, but also to extend to overseas Filipino workers. Merchandise included t-shirts, mugs, umbrellas, rosary beads, bags and calendars, among others.

While the items were put up online, they were likewise made available in various shops around the country through brand partners—namely, Earthly Sense Spa, Papemelroti, Caster, Tony & Jackey and Diamond Hotel.

This scheme did not go uncriticized, with the side of the brand partners incurring most of the critique. Caritas Manila tied up with private companies not only for souvenir items but also for promotional materials like banners that say, “Mabuhay Pope Francis!” bearing the partner companies’ logos. When these banners began lining major roads like EDSA in November, election lawyer Atty. Romulo Macalintal, in a statement published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, criticized the companies for being “no different from politicians who were warned by [Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio] Cardinal Tagle not to use the occasion for political purposes.” He added that the companies were only using the pope’s visit to advance their commercial motives.

Pascual, who is also head of the papal visit subcommittee on media relations and publicity, defended their partnerships, saying that putting company logos on banners was meant to show the private groups their gratitude for assisting them financially.“[We] started such an undertaking to show our solidarity with our Filipino brothers and sisters [private companies included] in being part of Pope Francis’ historic visit,” he said.

It is not only church-affiliated organizations that took part in this undertaking. Various privately owned shops produced their own Pope Francis mementoes without formal prompts from Caritas Manila or the Church. One such shop was Precious Moments, a local gift store that produced Pope Francis dolls following the aesthetic of the shop’s character icons. There were also food items. A baker from Pampanga, Lilian Mercado Lising-Borromeo, sold cookies with the pope’s smiling face in her family’s bakeshop. And days after the pope left for Rome, she was still getting orders.

Finally, there was a boom in the number of street vendors who sold various pope memorabilia—from shirts to balloons—along the official papal route. This phenomenon is what Small Enterprises Research and Development Foundation (Serdef) calls “streetpreneurship.” Of streetpreneurship’s opportunistic nature, Serdef says, “[It is] about making the most of the cards one is dealt, and with street entrepreneurs, high cards are rare.” The foundation adds, “[Streetpreneurs] are as exhilarated to be in the presence of such a holy and charismatic man as the rest of us.”