Pope goes hi-tech to ease suffering

Associated Press VATICAN CITY—Pope Benedict XVI consoled a 7-year-old Japanese girl, reassured a mother about her ailing son’s soul and advised a Muslim woman that dialogue was the way to peace in Ivory Coast. In a push to engage the world online, the Pontiff fielded questions from the girl, mother and Muslim woman during an unusual Good Friday appearance on Italian TV. It was hardly a casual or spontaneous chat: Seven questions were selected from thousands that poured in via RAI television’s website, and Benedict recorded his answers last week. He seemed a bit stiff, sitting all alone in a big white chair behind his desk inside the Apostolic Palace as an unseen interviewer read out the letters to him. But the teacher and pastor in the 84-year-old Benedict came through as he fielded the questions, which all dealt with suffering and Jesus’ death, which Christians recall on Good Friday, and his resurrection, which is celebrated on Easter Sunday. Japan quake The first question came from young Elena, who asked the Pope why she felt so afraid after Japan’s earthquake shook her house and killed so many children. “Why do children have to be so sad?” the girl asked. “I’m asking the Pope, who speaks with God, to explain it to me.” Speaking simply as if Elena were right there, Benedict responded that he too wondered why so many innocent people suffer, but that she should take heart in knowing that Jesus had suffered too. “You can be sure that in the world, in the universe, there are many people who are with you, thinking of you, doing what they can for you to help you,” Benedict said. “Be assured, we are with you, with all the Japanese children who are suffering.” ‘True act of love’ He then turned to a question from an Italian mother, Maria Teresa, who worried about her son, Francesco, who has been in a vegetative state since Easter 2009. She asked if Francesco’s soul still remained. “He feels the presence of love,” Benedict told her, praising her for keeping her vigil as a “true act of love.” “I encourage you, therefore, to carry on, to know that you are giving a great service to humanity with this sign of faith, with this sign of respect for life, with this love for a wounded body and a suffering soul,” he said. Msgr. Paul Tighe, the No. 2 man in the Vatican’s social communications office, said the decision to have the Pope participate in the televised event stemmed from the realization that Benedict must engage more with the public to ensure his message was received. Simple beginning “This is a very simple beginning of what you could call interactivity,” Tighe said in a recent interview. “It’s launching something new for us.” In the past, Benedict has taken preselected questions from carefully chosen Catholics, responding live in St. Peter’s Square, such as when he meets annually with university students. He also regularly answers questions submitted beforehand by journalists when flying to foreign countries and has fielded questions from groups of priests. But the Good Friday session was the first time he had taken questions from the general public—and not necessarily even the Catholic public. “The advantage of this is it opens up the possibility to people who couldn’t hope or aspire to having a direct meeting with the pope, but through the Internet can put their questions there,” Tighe said. Muslim woman That was certainly the case for Bintu, a Muslim woman who greeted the Pope in Arabic and asked him in French for his advice on bringing peace to Ivory Coast, which has been wracked by political violence. “How many innocents have lost their lives!” she said. “How many mothers and how many children traumatized!” Benedict told the woman that he was grieved that he could do so little, saying he had tasked the head of the Vatican’s justice and peace office, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Turkson, to try to mediate between the country’s opposing factions. “The only path is to renounce violence, to begin anew with dialogue, with the attempt to find peace together, with a new concern for one another, a new willingness to be open to one another,” the Pontiff said. The broadcast spliced the Pope’s responses with commentary from Italian religious affairs experts, as well as video footage of the people asking their questions. It was a very feminine-focused event, with three of the questions coming from women and a fourth about Mary. Way of the Cross Benedict continued that theme with the more traditional Good Friday event—the nighttime Way of the Cross procession at Rome’s Colosseum, in which the faithful reenact the final hours of Christ’s life. The meditations for each station of the cross were composed by an Italian nun, Sr. Maria Rita Piccione, and the artwork accompanying them were designed by another nun. Piccione said she didn’t know why she had been selected. The only communication she ever had with the Pope, she said in a newspaper interview, was when she sent him a letter last year offering her support for the “persecution” that he and the Church were going through in the midst of the clerical abuse scandal. Benedict didn’t refer directly to the scandal but spoke generally about sin and how Good Friday recalls that Christ died for all humankind’s sins. He looked tired after the nearly two-hour procession, the bulk of which he spent kneeling in prayer. But he seemed to hold up well as he headed back to the Vatican, where he will preside over an Easter Vigil late Saturday and Sunday’s Easter Mass. Via Dolorosa While the Q&A session departed from the Vatican’s Good Friday routine, elsewhere in the world ancient Christian practices marked the solemn day. In Jerusalem, Christian pilgrims filled the cobblestone alleyways of the walled Old City to commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion there two millennia ago. Thousands of international visitors and local Christians retraced Christ’s last steps down the Via Dolorosa, Latin for the “Way of Suffering.” The route ends at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. “All my life I’ve been waiting for this wish—I’ve been wishing for one day to come here in Jerusalem to worship. I wanted to step where my Lord stepped,” said Roshan Futsom, a pilgrim from Toronto. Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer

Suffering and the Smiling Filipino

Ted Laguatan, Esq.
INQUIRER.net

CALIFORNIA, United States—Many Filipinos claim that the Philippines is the only Christian country in Asia. This is no longer true. Papua New Guinea and East Timor are now also predominantly Christian countries.

Some Filipinos seem to think that God favors them in some ways because they are Christian. In a somewhat profound and deep sense, they may have a point.

Ninety-two percent of Filipinos are Christians. Eighty-one to eighty-five percent of which are Catholics. Traditional and official Catholic belief sees suffering as a way to heaven. Some of the greatest Catholic saints have gone through incredible sufferings: painful illnesses, persecutions, tortures, disappointments, humiliations, and martyrdoms. Catholics are taught that offering sufferings to God results in the forgiveness of sins and other blessings.

To Catholics, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is the most important event in the history of mankind. It healed the breach caused by sin between man and God. In Catholic mystical theology, undeserved suffering is connected to Christ's which brings forth much good.

The willing acceptance to undergo sufferings in imitation of Christ presumably bears much fruit not only in the life of the individual sufferer but also in the lives of others. For practicing Catholics, a good life involves accepting suffering that come's one's way and even deliberately seeking self-imposed suffering at times, such as fasting and other deprivations.

Millions of Filipinos suffer much because of government corruption, social and economic inequality, ignorance, malnutrition, slum housing, crime infested violent surroundings, and general poverty. An estimated one third of the population goes to bed hungry at night. The country is also prone to natural disasters: earthquakes, typhoons, floods, volcanic eruptions.

Perhaps it is this deeply embedded Catholic belief about the virtue of suffering ingrained in the Filipino psyche by almost 500 years of Spanish imposed Catholicism that makes him (or her) so resilient, enabling him endure so much. The Filipino somehow manages to remain smiling no matter how dire his circumstances may be.

His admirable resiliency and gentle toughness are also there because of his great faith in a loving God—that somehow, God will see him through all these sufferings. This simple faith and trust in a God whose love will make all things right in the end is also deeply installed in the Filipino psyche.

Some political pundits argue that this general Filipino attitude of quiet acceptance of suffering is a negative—that it leads to continuous suffering. Maybe. However, what is negative or positive really depends on the specific context and circumstances of a situation. I won't go into that in this article.

The Filipino's trust in a God who will come through for him likewise provides him the "bahala na ang Diyos" attitude that enables him to brave loneliness and dangers in distant cold or desert lands and strange foreign cultures: to find work that enables him to feed his family back home or to send his children or younger brothers and sisters to school so that they may have decent futures. Many OFWs and immigrants carry with them the Santo Nino image of the Christ child to foreign lands. It sustains him in a very real way.

Surreal scenes of so many smiling Filipino faces in the midst of so much devastation appear all too often in news coverages of natural disasters. When typhoon Ondoy smashed the Philippines in September 2009, it was fascinating to see on TV the smiling faces of Filipinos wading their way through deep flood waters with their children and belongings—as if it was all a game. I saw the same kind of smiles in the faces of evacuees fleeing from the wrath of Pinatubo when it exploded. It's as if they were saying: "It’s okay. We'll survive this no matter what. God is with us."

I have seen major disasters in the United States and other countries. Rarely does one see a smiling face, if at all—amidst flood waters, tornado, fire or earthquake wreckage. Of course, that's understandable, who can manage to smile in the face of so much pain and suffering?

I know the Filipino can. In that sense, maybe God does favor us.

The California State Bar honors Atty. Laguatan as one of less than 29 US lawyers officially certified continuously for more than 20 years as an expert/specialist in immigration law. He also does accident injuries, wrongful death, and business law. For communication: San Francisco area - 455 Hickey Blvd., Ste. 516, Daly City, Ca 94015. Email laguatanlaw@gmail.com

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