A very happy 75th birthday to Cardinal Vidal!

For tonight's show on Straight from the Sky, we are privileged and greatly honored to have with us, our beloved eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal to be our special guest on our show on the occasion of his 75th birthday... what a blessing straight from heaven! Cardinal Vidal is a name so highly respected in this country. He is one of the most influential names not just in Cebu, but also throughout the Philippines and especially with Catholics in Asia. What's remarkable with Cardinal Vidal is that... he comes from a poor family background, which gives you an idea that what the Catholic church teaches us about humility... this means that even the poorest of the poor can still become a great man in this country if he is humble. This is why God wanted his only son, Jesus Christ, to be born of poor parents, rather than be born in richness or in royalty.

For the year 2006, his eminence has been "invited" to tender his resignation, which is the practice of the Catholic Church... but whether the Holy See will accept his resignation is an enigma. This year also, Cardinal Vidal will be celebrating many milestones. On March 14th, he will be launching his book entitled, "Cardinal Vidal Speaks to his Priests" which is a collection of his homilies and all the speeches he made throughout his 21 years as a Cardinal.

Meanwhile tonight, a lot of his friends and admirers in the clergy, the religious and the lay faithful will be celebrating his birthday at the Grand Ballroom of the Waterfront Hotel after a Eucharistic Celebration at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, let me point that even on his birthday, the Cardinal always has eye on the needs of the Cebu Archdiocese. Hence his dinner isn't really being paid for by the church, but by those who willingly gave to the benefit of the Clergy Healthcare Program of the Archdiocese of Cebu.

So today, we greet his eminence a very Happy 75th Birthday and we wish you more years to come in the service of the Lord for Cardinal Vidal is a true shepherd to his flock who teaches not only the priests in his archdiocese but all Catholics to embrace a true Christian life. See our beloved Cardinal Vidal talk about his life and times tonight on SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00 p.m.

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Disasters are once upon us... like the sinking of that Egyptian ferryboat in the Red Sea Saturday morning, which took the lives of 800 passengers. In the Philippines, we too have our own share of a disaster, which was also shown on CNN and BBC... however it is unfortunate that our disaster is man-made. That's the Wowowee tragedy at the Ultra complex when a stampede killed 73 people and injured some 359 fans. One cannot imagine how 73 people, including the hundreds of injured could be crushed by the weight of humanity.

While Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants to get into the bottom of why this tragedy happened in order to find out anyone's culpability... I would rather go deeper into finding out what lessons we can learn from this tragedy so that authorities can prevent it from ever happening again. I would like to believe that one of the main culprits is Filipino indiscipline. Filipinos just don't know how to make a line or queue up. It all begins right there. If only those people lined up... even if there was a stupid prankster who shouted, "Fire" or "Bomba" it wouldn't have caused a stampede.

Of course, pundits blame the poverty of the Filipino, which have been exploited not just by politicians, but our networks, both GMA and ABS-CBN. Instead of teaching their faithful viewers moral values of hard work and education, they lure them with get-rich-quick schemes and in the end; those programs lure the hopeless and the poor in the hope that last Saturday would be their lucky day. Truth to tell, they had the same chances in winning the Lotto and they don't have to wait for hours to get to the Ultra.

One symbol for the entertainment industry is shown on two faces... one that is laughing, while the other is crying. What happened last Saturday morning was a face of grief done by the entertainment industry on its own followers. It is a unique Filipino tragedy in the sense that a media company like ABS-CBN spins up its web of hope and promises for a quick fix in life for the majority of its fans who belong to the poor and hopeless people who huddle in the slums and ghettos of Metro Manila like fleas. Yesterday afternoon, I could only puke watching the show "The Buzz" where Wowowee host Willie Revillame was sobbing all over with Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino, trying to explain what he cannot explain. Sorry sir, that won't bring the dead back to life! To my mind, it is a worse tragedy is that ABS-CBN continues to capitalize on the very same incident as if nothing has happened and it was showbiz as usual. ABS-CBN ought to also learn its lessons from this national tragedy to teach our people values!

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