Pope Francis and climate change

I will be one of the lucky few who will be in Tacloban and then on to Palo when Pope Francis visits. The city and other parts of Leyte province were destroyed by one of the strongest typhoons to hit the Philippines.

In Palo, we will stay in the Pedrosa ancestral house that has survived for two hundred years but was not able to withstand the Haiyan (Yolanda) storm surge. The roof was blown away but the ground floor was intact. I understand that some work was done by architect friends of the family to make it habitable. We will stay there during the Pope’s visit but will be sleeping in cots.

To the people of Palo, the house is an icon and they have signed a petition to the Aquino government that it be restored because it was very much part of their history.

I remember visiting it in the past with my late husband, Ambassador Alberto Pedrosa. We used to watch the procession as it moved out of the Palo Cathedral which was across the street.

 Ramon, my brother-in- law says “the town historian of Palo, the late Tingting O’Mora wrote that Palo was so named because during the Spanish era and perhaps even before that, it was the place where sailing ships were outfitted with their masts — los palos — sourced from the tall timbers in the surrounding forest cover. 

There was along the wall in the dining room in the big house a mural depicting that ship building activity by the wide Bangon River along the shores at the foot of the Guinhangdan in old Palo. Among the shipbuilders was master carpenter Carlos Pedrosa of San Joaquin  who realigned the huge roof of the old cathedral when it was skewed off its moorings by a super typhoon.

In the meantime his oldest child Pio then a young boy tended the family’s herd of goats.”

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The Pope will see first-hand the ruins of this historic town.

“The present Acebedo-Pedrosa house at the corner of Pio Pedrosa and San Salvador Streets in Palo was built in 1840 by our great great grandparents Marcos Acebedo and Anastacia Mora. According to family records and tradition, during the Spanish regime the building,  at one time or another, housed el municipio y cuartel — the municipal hall and jail, correos — the post office, escuela principal  — the municipal school. During the Philippine Revolution it  secretly quartered the Katipunan resistance in Leyte.”

During World War 2 in the battle for liberation, the Palo Cathedral was mustered as an emergency hospital by the US Army.

There is anecdotal evidence from Leyte guerillas that General Douglas MacArthur made the house his temporary headquarters upon landing in Red Beach, Palo. Following General MacArthur were President Sergio Osmeña Sr. and his cabinet when they entered Palo. Thus it might be said that the house also became the first seat of the Philippine Government-in-Exile when it returned to the Philippines.

There are stories that the ground floor became a refreshment bar for the officers and soldiers of the liberating army.

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Pope Francis’ visit to the Philippines especially to Tacloban and Palo is timely. It comes just before he releases an encyclical on climate change after his South Asian trip.

He goes to Sri Lanka after the Philippines.

It was reported that Pope Francis addressed his message to Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister. He said the world could only slow climate change “if we act together and agree.”

“The time to find global solutions is running out,” he added.

During his visit to Palo he is expected to dine with the Yolanda typhoon victims, some of whom, to this day, still live in tents. It will also be a good time to find out just how foreign aid running to millions of dollars was used for these victims.

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Recently, he made news once again when he declared that “the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real. God is not “a magician with a magic wand,”  he added.

Many Catholics who are torn between science and some church teachings will be happy with his statements. It shows the broad sweep of his mind to assure Catholics that there is no contradiction between the findings of science and the teachings of the Church. This was an intellectual dilemma for some Catholics until Pope Francis made these statements.

He made the statements at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He said “both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator — arguing instead that they “require it.”

In a Guardian report he explained “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said. “He created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment. True.

The corollary of the Pope’s statements will enable some Catholics who believe in the teachings of the Church and science’s findings on “The Big Bang” and “Evolution” to return to the Catholic religion.  It puts an end to the enmity between science and religion which ensued in the time of Copernicus.