World Over - 2014--01-15 – Manila Cardinal Luis Tagle with Raymond Arroyo

now once again Raymond Arroyo welcome back to the world over my next guest is the head of one of the fastest growing Catholic populations in the world he's archbishop of manila and at 57 he's one of the youngest Cardinals in the church he served as president of the extraordinary synod last october i sat down with him during his recent visit to catholic university here in DC he spoke candidly about his life in the Philippines as well as the Synod including what became a rather significant controversy over the treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion on the occasion of Pope Francis's visit to the Philippines here is an encore of my exclusive interview with Cardinal Lewis Tagle your eminence I want to start with your childhood I'm gonna take you way back what is your most vivid memory of your childhood one of the earliest memories is of myself as a little boy leading a whole community in praying the rosary yes my parents especially my mother taught us how to pray the rosary and you know in in my hometown in my especially the street where we lived they had the custom of bringing the statue of Our Lady of Fatima from house to house you know where the family that hosts the image has a praying of the Rosary and it's also it also becomes a moment for the community to get together to know each other and to share some food I was one of those little children that made a sensation because we could lead the the Rosary so I remember being invited from house to house to lead the Rosary tell me as you look back you mentioned your mother yes you look back at manual and Milagros your mother yes yes what are their personality traits do you see in your own ministry today I guess all of us as we grow we begin to see shades of our parents I know what do you see in your personality and in your work today that bears the mark of your parents one is both of them are hard-working I don't think the word rest exists in their dictionary I see that present in me also patience and perseverance you know my parents went through hard times they were both teenagers during the Second World War they saw a lot of destruction and but they also saw a lot of determination how to rise from ruins and rubble from them I also saw the beauty of simple faith and simple prayer you know they they're not as pious as other people would be but they are very religious their faith is strong though they they know that the Sun will rise they know that there is a God there is our lady who would always be with us and I see that whenever I I find myself in difficult situations especially when I'm confronting the decision to make and things are not always clear and I feel the weight of the responsibility than I know now as my parents believed in a God who will make things work for the good of all then I say just relax have faith have faith we see that certainly in your work and in your ministry before coming to Manila and now now I someone told me the other day who is a no-shoe that you prefer to go by Tito your nickname yes why well my real name is Luis right and the diminutive is Luisito the small the weak yes and it's a custom in the Philippines often to forget the real name and to cling to the diminutive as how the Luis has been dropped and the seto and the Jews has taken hold yes and so many people are surprised that I'm named Louise that my real name is Louise so it's a it's a name that is known to friends known to people who who are at home with me or at ease with me or have I always say people who like me refer to college it's like grandparents know when they get mad at you they call you by your formal names the full name louise antonio is actually i wanted to we are here at Catholic University of America where you had spent a lot of time yes more than six years that's right you got your doctrinal did your doc doc trying to work here in sacred theology yes um what is it like being back here and what did you take I mean you're a man of the southern hemisphere yes yet you've spent a sizable amount of time here in Rome what did you take from this experience being here in America no it was a first of all I I did not plan on going to further studies when my bishop called me after ordination to the priesthood that I would one day maybe after three years of pastoral ministry in the Philippines be sent to further studies I objected I said no no I'm I'm not interested anymore I've had so many years of studies but it was a mission sent to be sent to study and I pleaded with him if I could just pursue my masters and doctorate in the Philippines you know and he said no it would be good to go to some other place and I I experienced a widening of horizon that's what I yeah in in my own person no I felt like I understood myself better as a Filipino I understood the faith better and the richness of the Catholic tradition I saw how a church like the Church in the United States grapples with concerns that I don't I did not fully understand at that time no but if expanded my my my perspective and I'm very happy that I studied the Second Vatican Council yes focused on Pope Paul the sixth and his collegiality this question of collegiality and Paul the sixth soon to be blessed five you know uh Paul the six how does that vision of collegiality compare with what we're seeing under Pope Francis I think Pope Francis is taking it seriously this collegiality is really communion the communion within the universal Church what does that mean explain it to people who don't understand communion I think can be explained this way on on an objective level wherever you find the church there are common elements that we hold together so in common communion like of course we have the one God the same God the same Holy Spirit the same baptism the same word of God the same Eucharist the same apostolic ministry the same call to mission so I may be in India I may be in Bangladesh I may be in Germany and it's the same word of God that is a that is proclaim is the same baptism the same Eucharist so on there on that level we are one community but also on the more subjective level and on the structural level also there are avenues for us to be brothers and sisters and for us bishops to be call responsible with and for each other there is no church that I can consider or should consider as alien to me I should not say I am the Archbishop of Manila and so my concern is only Manila Washington DC or that far too far away from us from our concerns no no because of collegiality I consider every bishop as my brother we belong to one community of Bishops and I will try to do my best in Manila not only for my sake and for the sake of the Archdiocese of Manila but for the sake of all my brother bishops and their concerns are my concerns too like I'm very much worried when the kidnapping of these girls in Nigeria happened and it saw it providentially the secretary of the Apostolic nude show in Manila is from Nigeria so I asked him though so how is Cardinal so-and-so this must be very hard on him so heavily on him no so this this openness up for me a whole Vista of ministry also not for individual gain how does this factor into decision-making and do you see a shift in Pope Francis's approach as opposed to that of his predecessors no not not really Pope Francis as a new pope the first year that I haven't interacted with him has been a very much interested in knowing firsthand what is happening in the local church and that is in order to strengthen the role of the Church of Rome as the center of charity and communion so paying attention to the local realities does not negate the role of the center it will enhance the role of the center which is to make love charity especially especially missionary charity circulant I want to talk about that because you and your church are so responsible for exporting priests to Europe to the United States to a lot of the northern hemisphere yes you have 7,000 priests roughly in in the Philippines you have 80 five million Catholics yes is there a crisis going on I mean I know it's a circulation of love by sending your your your best and brightest to other countries but are you facing something of a crisis internally well we that has always been the situation by the way we have been used to having one priest for a big big parish so in terms of crisis if it is a crisis then we have gotten useless now it's commonplace it's commonplace and I think what saves us though is the fact that many of our priests are relatively young and there is great participation on the part of the laypeople and that lessens a lot of the concerns and the also the wait era of ministry handled by the priests you in your previous position when you were the Bishop of vamoose you quadrupled doubled expanded vocations by an incredible number something that what was it 27 and then you you took it up to 140 something priests 143 priests how was that possible how did you do that well I don't know I I did not plan for that it's just that the fact that the the the diocese became a favorite destination of internal migrants people from other parts of the country looking for jobs and and that part of the Philippines blessed you know with with jobs with the opportunities and so many people went there and this is one thing good about migrants when they were prudent from their places of origin they look for home and the next best home for them is the parish the church and I see that not only internally in the Philippines but also externally that's why Filipino migrant workers no in Europe especially they are the ones who keep the churches filled and the line I celebrated Mass in the Duomo in the Cathedral of Milan Cardinal Scala invited me for some conferences and he scheduled a mass and a Sunday for the Filipino community specific predominantly for them but it's not only for the right now right you know 20,000 oh my attending 20,000 Filipinos attended my goodness and I thought the Duomo was packed and after the mass the master ceremony said you might want to greet the people who were not able to enter so I said sure so we did this procession and I got to the door of the the Duomo I almost fainted I was the whole Piazza and the streets were filled with another 11,000 Filipino screaming asking for blessing and the one of the the canons of the cathedral said look your eminence this is the future of the church here in Milan I said no not just the future they are the present the present isn't that amazing yeah and that happened in our da in my former diocese there was an influx of migrants they come to church they feel at home in church and their children is a vibrancy there before you know it this young gentleman are asking what can we do to be a help how do I enter the seminary and you had an idea or two for yeah and I also made sure maybe this is my contribution whenever there are big feasts national feasts confirmation and I always include in my home Elise you know sometimes in the form of a joke no I always remind people especially the young to consider the vocation to the priestly life and religious life as one of the options open to them I want to talk about some of the difficulties and challenges we're facing not only in your local church but Universal there was a reproductive health law yes that you fought vigorously against I know because what it requires is the government to provide contraceptives all over the country yeah you opposed it it's now on hold I believe but it has passed yeah his parents yes there were a few of your confreres bishops who wished or threatened to excommunicate some of the politicians involved and even the president you did not agree with that why not yeah well first of all I am very cautious about language the language of excommunication because the church is primarily a sacrament of salvation not of damnation so we I believe excommunication happens in Ex in a very strict circumstances and and you have to judge levels of culpability on the personal level so having my dad but you know in fact when that was clarified the bishops the bishops who were alleged to have been a part of that pronouncement they were surprised because they said that in their interviews they did not threaten anyone they were asked now some of them were asked is it abortion a cause or a reason for extra munication and they they explained how some contraceptives are abortifacient no so if it's it's in that context so it's not a blanket you know threat to to supporters of the but of the law now Pope Francis recently appointed you as one of the co precedents of this upcoming Synod a very important Synod on the family taking place in Rome this fall yeah and it'll continue into the next year you have quoted in interviews most recently in the Boston Globe as saying you were open to hearing arguments as to whether Catholics can be divorced and remarried without annulments why I was quoted to say John Allen quotes you as saying you were open to arguments where my hey Mary who divorced and remarried uh-huh without an annulment are you oh I you know I don't recall I don't recall that the conversation focusing on that no what I recall of the conversation is this we when we had this conversation we just came from the consistory her Cardinal Kasper right yeah gave a whole presentation and the discussion that ensued you know open for me personally a whole range of a whole range of concerns and issues that I was ignorant on so I said well there's so much to learn especially now that I'm a precedent delicous though so I am open to all the perspectives that could help us shed light on the issue do you think with your study and your understanding of theology certainly far surpassing mine is it possible to envision a policy that would allow Catholics to divorce and remarry without an annulment given the church teaching and Christ's teaching on the indissolubility marriage is it possible I just came from a meeting of the Preparatory Committee here for the Signum thing this the following things are very clear the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the church will not be changed know what people are looking at right now especially the canonists is this no how could canon law how could canon law and it's process No reflect more clearly no the teaching of Jesus Christ you know and the teaching of the church because some some people are claiming that the canonical procedures are too rigid and also some are even asking do the canonical prescriptions are they clear about the doctrinal basis or is the legal canonical path taking its own way quite separately from the doctrinal dimension okay the other thing is it also became quite clear that every scholar failed marriage is quite unique you you you it's difficult to say all you know marriages that ended up in divorce no because when you when you deal with cases and you deal with with personally londres lives then you have to attack the annulment process so is that what the focus of this is reforming the anomaly process that's that has become a big big so doctrinally i how can you change the word of the bible of the words of Jesus that Cardinal Kasper seems to be suggesting something akin to that though in that presentation which I know was hostile II received by a lot of the Cardinals present uh-huh but uh no but but here he responded to that yes he said he was stopping there as a theologian who who did a lot of historical in fact in the mountain yesterday yesterday there was another perspective that came up you know the canonical tradition of the Eastern Rite Church right right how they handle so-called divorces and second marriages and of course the the Synod will not focus only on this situation well we see against me coverage of this seems to focus on for example in the Philippines we don't have divorce right ha if the whole thing that is about divorce and Union counsel maybe just call a synod for countries with with the orders but we have families where the couples are separated not because they're there they don't want to live with one another but their de facto separated by poverty by migration it's not anger towards one another that made them decide to separate but it is the love for each other and for the children you know it's a totally different situation are you concerned that a combination of certain individuals and the media are hijacking this Synod and changing it into something it was never envisioned to be that's all Lissa that's always a danger you know because people have their own interests and they have their own agenda you know so they they express in their form of reporting some sort of a support for for their agenda you know but I said on the preparatory committee of the Synod and I tell you the communion of the divorce remarried is just one item among many many many many many items there are at least eight major topics and that is just one and they always say this is a North Atlantic exactly North Atlantic concern when you go to Africa and you go to Asia no and and for us for example because of migration you know the fabric of the family is really tested and so we are asking for serious pastoral care for migrants so that they could remain faithful to their spouses left at home or to their children III want to wrap up here so many people during the last Conclave stopped me on the street especially one young man whom you met in passing you may not even remember this he felt he had a calling to the priesthood he asked I think to come speak with you for a moment you were crossing the Piazza and you sat with him and spoke to him for twenty minutes or so and he enthusiastically told me about this moment this encounter with you and he said he felt it was decisive in his considering this vocation seriously and almost a message a message for him personally how aware are you of those moments and do you go out of your way to make time for people you encounter I'm sure you were on your way to something else and that yeah I I usually try to stop though when people want to ask questions and if if the questions are are really essential or important then I I give them time people say you are the Asian Pope Francis Oh Pope Francis Pope Francis sorry react to that I smile I don't I don't take it seriously I mean I know Pope Francis we were together for three years the the Council of the Synod he is this person I am NOT here but if there are there are i work longer with cardinal ratzinger than so well i think what they're talking about is your way of life you lead a simple way of life you you you are mingling with the public you are available to people one can look at your face and see the joy of your faith I think that's what there's maybe well if it is that then I'm happy we're happy too your eminence thank you so much for your Thank You Raymond thank you you

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Id: KZIbUgy2DWU

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 16 2015