‘I’m here to be with you’

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines  – Amid a frenzied welcome and cheering throngs, Pope Francis’ five-day visit to the Philippines is chiefly about breaking bread with disaster victims, before whom he declared in an unscripted and emotional homily yesterday, “I am here to be with you.”

Many unabashedly wept as Pope Francis delivered a message of hope during a mass before thousands of rain-drenched devotees, many of whom had lost family members in the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.

They stood in silence as the open-air celebration of the Eucharist proceeded amid heavy rain and strong winds triggered by Tropical Storm Amang.

“I’m a little bit late, but I’m here,” Francis said, drawing some laughter from the crowd.

But the mood immediately turned somber when he started consoling those who had lost loved ones from the super typhoon.

“So many of you have lost everything; I don’t know what to say to you... Some of you have lost part of your families. All I can do is keep silence and walk with you all with my silent heart,” he said.

Clad in yellow raincoats that offered little protection from the rain and the cold, the pilgrims stood their ground and remained within their assigned locations as the first papal mass in Eastern Visayas proceeded.

But little did they expect that the pope, who arrived an hour early due to the bad weather, would celebrate the mass clad in a similar raincoat.

Cheers erupted from the drenched crowd when the pope emerged wearing the same yellow poncho.

Earlier, the Archdiocese of Palo said they would distribute around a million raincoats in anticipation of the rainy weather.

With his trademark mischievous smile, the pontiff proceeded with the mass as the weather deteriorated.

Before his homily, the pope spent a few minutes in silence – as if sizing up his audience – before asking if he could speak in his native Spanish.

“I have translator, I bought translator. May I do it? May I?” the pope asked, to which the crowd replied in the affirmative.

In his homily, the pontiff reiterated the purpose of his trip to the Philippines: to be with the victims of Yolanda.

“I’d like to tell you something close to my heart. When I saw from Rome that catastrophe, I (knew) I had to be here. And on those very days I decided to come here,” he told thousands of pilgrims who braved the bad weather to attend the papal mass.

The pope urged the faithful to trust Jesus Christ, who Himself had suffered pain, loneliness and humiliation.

“Jesus always goes before us and when we pass an experience, a cross, he passed there before us,” the pope said.

“And if today we find ourselves here 14 months afterwards, 14 months precisely after the Typhoon Yolanda hit, it is because we have the security of knowing we will not weaken in our faith because Jesus has been here before us,” he added.

The pontiff also told the crowd to hold on to Mary and tell her what they feel in their hearts.

“Let us know that we have a mother, Mary, and a great brother, Jesus,” he added. “We are not alone. We also have many brothers who in this moment of catastrophe came to help.”

One of the readers in the mass was a woman who lost 11 of her family members during the onslaught of Yolanda. The Bible verses in the mass were read in English, Ilonggo, Bisaya and other dialects.

At one point, the winds shook the crucifix on the altar, almost knocking it down, but it remained in place.

Comfort in silence

The pope appeared at a loss for words toward the end of his homily. “Forgive me if I have no other words to express myself. Please know that Jesus never lets you down. Know that the tenderness of Mary never lets you down,” he said.

The pope called for a minute of silence and asked the faithful to reflect on their situation and their relationship with Jesus and Mary.

“And beside the cross was His mother. We are like a little child in the moments when we have so much pain and no longer understand anything. All we can do is grab hold of her hand firmly and say ‘mommy,’ like a child does when it is afraid. It is perhaps the only words we can say in difficult times – ‘Mommy’,” he said.

“And holding onto her mantle and with the power that comes from Jesus’ love on the cross, let us move forward and walk together as brothers and sisters in the Lord,” he said.

Francis arrived at the Daniel Z. Romualdez airport in Tacloban City 45 minutes ahead of his original schedule of 8:45 a.m.

Fr. Amadeo Alvero, spokesman of the Archdiocese of Palo, said the change in the pope’s schedule was due to the worsening weather condition brought about by Tropical Storm Amang.

Alvero initially said the early arrival of the pope would allow him to leave Leyte by 4:15 p.m., or 45 minutes earlier than his original plan.

However, just over an hour after leaving for Palo town, the papal convoy returned to the Tacloban airport and left shortly after 1 p.m.

Crowds had gathered as early as 4 a.m. at the airport despite the worsening weather to welcome the pope.

After the mass, he surprised the crowd when his popemobile weaved around the airport where the mass was held. At one point, he even asked the driver to stop so he could bless a child who was in the crowd.

“He is just like us,” a typhoon survivor said in Filipino after the pope had left.

Earlier, upon seeing him disembark from the Philippine Airlines plane that brought him to Tacloban City, the crowd started chanting “Viva il Papa, Papa Francesco.”

“It shows how excited the people are to meet the pope,” Fr. Alvero said. “The weather won’t stop them.”

For Marites, a 45-year-old Leyte resident who lost a brother during the typhoon, seeing the pope up close seemed to have alleviated her exhaustion from the long wait. “It was totally worth it,” she said.

Palo Archbishop John Du profusely thanked Francis after the mass, saying the people had never imagined the pope celebrating the Eucharist with them.

Du gave Francis an image of the Immaculate Concepcion made from the debris of the Palo cathedral after it was damaged by Yolanda.

“The suffering of our people defied imagination yet in the midst of pain and suffering, it was our Christian faith that helped us through,” Du said.

“May your humble presence among the poor and among us who have suffered the tragedy of the super typhoon ever lead us to the restful waters of God’s mercy and love,” he added.

In return, the pope handed Du a mosaic image of the Madonna del Popolo for the Palo cathedral.

Meanwhile, Fr. Aris Sison, rector of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cubao, called Francis “a saint in our lifetime.”

“You can feel that Jesus is truly inside him,” Sison said.

“I believe he will be canonized a saint in our lifetime,” he added. “He chooses to speak from the heart. He is work first before words.”

He said the pope was not just energetic, but was passionate as well “in his desire to communicate the love of God.”

Since the start of his papacy in 2013, Pope Francis has canonized 17 saints, including John Paul II on April 27, 2014. The last one was Joseph Vaz from Sri Lanka on Jan. 15 before he proceeded to Manila on the same day for a five-day visit.

In his message at the Meeting of Families at the Mall of Asia Arena on Friday, Pope Francis warned the faithful of the many dangers to Filipino families, including “natural, economic and destructive lifestyles” that threaten their integrity and break up the basic unit of society.

“While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality,” the pope said. – Paolo Romero