Pope Benedict XVI meets with CBCP

Last Saturday evening, we drove to the fabulous Mactan Island Shangri-La Resort & Spa’s Grand Ballroom to grace the 50th birthday and thanksgiving celebration (where we enjoyed a special show with Hadji Alejandro and Willie Nepomuceno) of our good friend Mr. Chester Cokaliong. The invitation was 6:30pm and after passing the end of the runway by 6:45pm it was just a mere 7-minutes more to the Shangri-La. But then we got stuck in a humongous traffic; a traffic accident we thought. But apparently, it was a huge celebration in Barangay Mactan including a huge party at the residence of Mayor Paz Radaza that literally blocked the road. So we arrived in Shangri-La past 8:00pm .

This tells you that the Lapu-Lapu City government was totally insensitive to the tourists arriving in the various resorts and hotels in Mactan who were all stuck in that traffic. The least we could have expected from the Office of the Mayor was an early warning from the airport telling motorists to avoid passing that route, so they won’t get caught in that stupid traffic.

That incident also teaches us that if the Lapu-Lapu City government doesn’t make plans to widen the circumferential road towards the tourist areas in Mactan, its prospects for future investments may just dwindle or move to areas with lesser problems. Traffic along that route is already bad as it is, but when they hold a barangay party, it’s totally clogged!

Lastly, it’s bad enough that we are caught in a snail’s paced traffic with engines overheating, but the discorrals along the route were boom, boom, booming away. Our car windows felt that it was about to get shattered! I pity the people of Bo. Mactan who had to suffer all that noise pollution. Lapu-Lapu may have become a Chartered City, but it will never grow for as long as its city officials think and act like they were still a small municipio!

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Last Friday, we learned that Pope Benedict XVI gave an audience to prelates from the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) who finished their “ad limina” visit to Rome. Although there were no names of the clergy members who met the Pope, we do know that Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma was one of them and I think also retired Ricardo Cardinal Vidal.

The Pope spoke in English and said, “The deep links which Catholics enjoy with the Successor of Peter has always been a significant characteristic of faith in your country. I pray that this communion will continue to grow and flourish as you consider the present challenges of your apostolate. While the Philippines continues to face many challenges in the areas of economic development, we must recognize that these obstacles to a life of happiness and fulfillment are not the only stumbling blocks that must be addressed by the Church. Filipino culture is also confronted with the more subtle questions inherent to the secularism, materialism, and consumerism of our times.”

Pope Benedict added, “When self-sufficiency and freedom are severed from their dependence upon and completion in God, the human person creates for himself a false destiny and loses sight of the eternal joy for which he has been made. The path to rediscovering humanity’s true destiny can only be found in the re-establishment of the priority of God in the heart and mind of every person. Above all, to keep God at the center of the life of the faithful, the preaching of you and your clergy must be personal in its focus so that each Catholic will grasp in his or her innermost depths the life-transforming fact that God exists, that He loves us, and that in Christ He answers the deepest questions of our lives.”

The Holy Father continued, “Your great task in evangelization is therefore to propose a personal relationship with Christ as key to complete fulfillment… at the same time, it must be recognized that new initiatives in evangelization will only be fruitful if those proposing them are people who truly believe and live the message of the Gospel themselves.”

The Pope further recognized the role of Lay organizations in our country that draw people to the Lord and told the CBCP, “I therefore urge you to take special care in shepherding such groups, so that the primacy of God may remain in the forefront. Finally the Pope said, “The pastoral care of young people, which aims to establish the primacy of God in their hearts, tends inherently to result no only in vocations to Christian marriage, but also in plentiful callings of all kinds. But it appears that in many dioceses the number of priests and the corresponding number of parishes is not yet sufficient to meet the spiritual needs of the large and growing Catholic population. With you, I therefore pray that young Filipinos who feel called to the priesthood and the religious life will respond generously to the promptings of the Spirit.” This means the CBCP has its work cut out for them.

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