Joker renews call on Holy See to correct number of Pinoy cardinals

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Joker Arroyo reiterated yesterday his call on Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Edward Joseph Adams, and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to reply to the Senate’s call to increase the number of Filipino cardinals in the country.

In a privilege speech last Wednesday, Arroyo expressed the need for the Senate to reiterate anew its “sense” before Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic hierarchy over the “grossly disproportionate” number of Filipino cardinals to the huge Catholic population of the Philippines.

Arroyo noted that the Senate adopted a resolution on the matter on Nov. 7, 2007 but the Senate has not gotten any response from the Holy See until now.

Arroyo said the Philippines is the second country in the world with the biggest number of Catholics but is ironically lacking in cardinals.

While the CBCP acknowledged receipt of the resolution, Arroyo lamented that the Senate did not receive any response from the Papal Nuncio.

“We expected the answer to come from the Papal Nuncio. Lamentably, the Papal Nuncio did not respond at all to the Senate, as if this chamber did not exist,” Arroyo said.

According to Arroyo, the Senate resolution was asking only for enlightenment, why we had only three cardinals while countries with lesser Catholic populations had a lot more. 

“Nothing more than edification,” he said.

The senator expressed hope that the matter will be discussed when the College of Cardinals meets today.

“We have one active Cardinal and two retired Cardinals. We have to put on record that a concern of the Senate on a temporal matter was ignored by the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See,” Arroyo said.