Pope Francis fills up nearly all Filipino Church vacancies

Filipino priests surround Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. VATICAN MEDIA

On October 18, 2019, the Holy Father assigned Manila priest Most Rev. Jose Alan Dialogo as Bishop of Sorsogon. What does it tell us when, in the last two years (2018 to 2019), Pope Francis has appointed 16 bishops for Filipino dioceses, filling up nearly all diocesan sedes vacantes?

Perhaps, His Holiness was preparing the Filipino Church for the faith celebration of the Jubilee Year of 2021 and he knew that a sede vacante is not just a sad matter of a flock without shepherd. He understood that a bishop in apostolic succession continues the sanctifying (priestly function), teaching (prophetic), and governing authority (kingly), which Jesus entrusted to the Holy Apostles, the bishop being the sole “guarantor of apostolicity and catholicity.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC Art 2, 74-79) summarizes it all: “The Transmission of Divine Revelation… is continued in Apostolic Succession.”

Remember when Manila was yet a suffragan diocese of Mexico in 1579? Separated by the Pacific Ocean, which is Earth’s largest and deepest body of water, the vast distance between Mexico City and Manila is 14,240 kilometers. The whole geophysical-pastoral situation has turned the management of the new suffragan diocese into a nightmare. Communications were harrowing. Countless human resources were put at risk when traveling, for in those days the danger to mortal lives and limbs in crossing the Pacific was very high. On top of it all, logistics from Mexico took a long time to arrive in Manila.

But here’s another phenomenon short of a miracle. Within 14 years from Bishop Salazar’s arrival in 1581, due to the fast growth of Catholicism in the Philippines, again by Divine Providence, Manila was elevated into an archdiocese in 1595, carving its ecclesiastical territory away from Mexico.

The first Manila bishop, Domingo de Salazar, OP, was succeeded by a Franciscan friar, Most Rev. Ignacio Santibáñez, OFM (1512-1598), who served as the first Archbishop of Manila (1595-1598), who in turn was succeeded by another Dominican, Most Rev. Miguel de Benavides, OP, the second Archbishop of Manila, an authenticated sequence of historical succession that went on and on up to His Eminence Antonio Luis Cardinal Tagle, the 32^nd and present Archbishop of Manila.

Akin to their Anglican brethren, the Aglipayan Church has its own “priesthood” but detached from Apostolic Succession and ministry. It is only in the Roman Catholic Church that one can find a continuous lineage of bishops that stretches back to the Apostolic time (Acts of the Apostles).

The present-day Protestant traditions (branching out from the Lutheran, Calvinist, Baptist, Methodist, et al.) and the numerous born-again Christian fellowships have no altars, no sacrifice, no victim, no priesthood, and no Apostolic Succession. Enter their lovely churches or assembly halls and look around. Because they do not have the Holy Priesthood, there is no Eucharist and Real Presence, and their center of worship is the Word of God, sola scriptura, making their minister a preacher and not a priest.

As President Duterte has once publicly advocated the “killing of bishops,” whom he sardonically labeled as inutil or “useless,” in contrast, Pope Francis keeps on trusting and appointing Filipino prelates to sensitive posts in the local and global Church. Full of confidence in the Filipino spirit, Pope Francis has designated Bishop Adolfo Tito Yllana as Apostolic Nuncio to Australia; and Bishops Pedro Baquero, SDB, and Rolando Santos, C.M. as the local ordinaries for Papua New Guinea.

The Bishop of Rome personally selected Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle to serve Caritas International, the world’s biggest charitable organization, as its President, and Bishop Oscar Solís as the first Filipino prelate of Salt Lake City, Texas. Pope Francis likewise appointed Archbishop Bernardito Auza, currently the first Filipino Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, as the first Papal Nuncio to Spain in time for the 2021 Year of Jubilee.

Apparently, Pope Francis believes that, after receiving the amazing grace of Christianity 500 years ago, Filipino Christians are now “gifted to give” and that the Filipino Church can become the prototype of a “field hospital” in Asia, describing her in 2018 as “the noble Church in the Philippines (that) now stands among the great Catholic nations in the entire world.”

Jose Mario Bautista Maximiano (facebook.com/josemario.maximiano) is the author of 500 YEARS ROMAN CATHOLIC (2020) and 24 PLUS CONTEMPORARY PEOPLE: God Writing Straight with Twists and Turns (Claretian, 2019).