CEBU CITY, Philippines – When Father Ladislav Nemet was assigned as University of San Carlos (USC) chaplain in the late 1980s, the campus fell in love with the young Serbian priest.
His former colleague in this Cebu university predicted that Nemet, then in his early 30s, would become a bishop one day.
Decades later, the former USC chaplain is already an archbishop. Soon, he will also be a cardinal, a close adviser of the Pope and one of those who will elect his successor.
Archbishop Nemet of Belgrade, 68, is one of 21 clergymen named by Pope Francis as new cardinals of the Catholic Church. Nemet and the new cardinals, including the Philippines’ Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, will receive their red hats from Francis on December 8.
He will be the first cardinal from Serbia, a southeastern European country where Catholics are a small minority — an estimated 382,000 or 5.6% of its 6.8 million people.
Nemet, who was USC chaplain from 1987 to 1990, is remembered in Cebu as a priest who was close to students and even spoke some Cebuano, the local language.
The Archdiocese of Cebu, found in central Philippines, is a five-million-strong Catholic territory that prides itself as Asia’s cradle of Christianity.
Cebu has been a place of mission for foreign priests of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) especially after China expelled Catholic missionaries in the mid-20th century, according to Father Felmar Castrodes Fiel, a well-known SVD priest and media personality.
SVD missionaries like Nemet have run the centuries-old USC since 1935.
Many fans on campus
“He was very dedicated, young, and dynamic, and he was very much loved by the students,” Father Heinz Kulueke, former SVD superior general, said of Nemet.
“He was a linguistic genius and spoke many languages. He was quick to learn Cebuano,” Kulueke told Rappler on Tuesday, October 8. Nemet speaks Hungarian, Serbian, English, German, Polish, Italian, and Croatian, according to the Archdiocese of Belgrade.
Nemet had many fans in the USC campus, said retired biology teacher and campus ministry volunteer Isabel delos Santos in a phone interview with Rappler on Wednesday, October 9.
Delos Santos, who retired in 2006 after 33 years of teaching at USC, said Nemet came off as strict because he was very particular about work and wanted tasks done well. Delos Santos said she was a campus ministry volunteer for seven years, including the entire time that Nemet was at USC.
“Diin man ka kahibaw nga na cardinal na siya, Dong?” Delos Santos, 78, asked Rappler during the interview. (How did you learn he is now a cardinal?) She said she would make sure to watch the consistory on December 8 if it is on Facebook Live.
“Nalipay kaayo ko. Daan pa ko nag expect he would excel as a priest. Bright kaayo siya, Dong. Ako na siya gisultihan nga sure ko ma obispo ka,” Delos Santos said. (I am so happy. I’ve long expected he would excel as a priest. He was so intelligent. I once told him that I was sure he would be made a bishop.)
Delos Santos, who is an associate of the Holy Spirit Sisters, said Nemet sent her and the campus ministry staff to various seminars to make sure they learn new things. She credits these seminars for training her to perform her current work at a seminary and in various organizations.
She said Nemet was friendly and a nature lover.
Catherine Nabua, who is still with the campus ministry of the USC South Campus, said it was Nemet who interviewed her for a campus ministry position in 1989. It was also Nemet who accepted her for the job. She said Nemet, like many of their foreign priests, was strict and very particular with time. But he was generous and spent time with them and organized regular outings.
Cipriano Olita, who now works at the Office of Student Affairs in University of the Philippines Cebu, said he worked with Nemet in USC for about 10 months.
Olita recalled how Nemet spent time to check her working conditions and welfare, as well as the challenges she countered. “He was always available if I needed some help. He was also available for the students. He usually joined activities organized by student volunteers in campus ministry,” Olita said in an email to Rappler.
Strengthening the Church in Serbia
Nemet’s appointment as cardinal reflects the Pope’s emphasis on strengthening the Catholic Church in places where it is weak.
Nemet himself sees the need to fortify Catholicism in his own country.
“My idea is that we need to strengthen the Church in Serbia,” said Nemet in a Vatican News interview in December 2022. “We are a Church that has not yet fully achieved its own profile. We were always part of the whole of Yugoslavia, Greater Yugoslavia, where the Catholic Church of Slovenia and Croatia had the say. Now we are on our own.”
In this context, Nemet views his appointment as Belgrade archbishop in November 2022 as a grace from God.
“At the beginning, it was pure stress: I had to organize everything,” Nemet told Vatican News. He noted they “had a relatively short time” between November 5, 2022, when his appointment was announced, and December 10, when he was installed as archbishop of Belgrade.
“Of course it was also a feeling that God had done something special in my life,” said the Belgrade archbishop.
He spoke of the joy of being archbishop even if Steyler missionaries like him “are not known for becoming bishops.” “Steyler missionary” is another name for members of the SVD, an order founded by Saint Arnold Janssen in Steyl, Netherlands, in 1875.
“Even though there are hundreds of Steylers in Europe, we are only two bishops; another brother is a bishop in Poland. We were in seminary together and I am now an archbishop in Serbia. Of course it was a joy, an incredible joy, also for my family,“ Nemet said in this 2022 interview.
Nemet was one of two SVD archbishops among the 21 cardinals recently named by Francis.
The other one is Tokyo Archbishop Tarcisius Kikuchi, who is also president of Caritas Internationalis. Kulueke said there was only one other SVD cardinal, Beijing Archbishop Thomas Cardinal Tien Ken-sing — who was elevated to the cardinalate in 1946, expelled in China in 1951, and died in 1967 — before the two were announced.
”This is a special gift of the Church to the society in our 150th jubilee and we are very grateful to Pope Francis for this special gift,” Kulueke said.
The cardinal-elect was born on September 7, 1956 in Odžaci, Republic of Serbia. He was ordained an SVD priest on May 1, 1983.
Nemet holds a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Aside from being a missionary to the Philippines, he served as lecturer in Poland, Austria, and Croatia. He worked with the Holy See Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Vienna.
Nemet was also the provincial of the Hungarian Province of the Society of the Divine Word and secretary general of the Hungarian Episcopal Conference, according to the Vatican.
The Vatican press site said Archbishop Nemet was reelected to a second term as chair of the International Episcopal Conference of Saints Cyril and Methodius in 2021. He is also the vice president of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE). – Rappler.com
Max Limpag is a freelance journalist based in Cebu and is an Aries Rufo Journalism Fellow of Rappler for 2024.
