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Bishop Pablo Virgilio ‘Ambo’ David, soon to be the 10th cardinal from the Philippines, even asks the person who broke the news: ‘Joke?’
It was a laid-back Sunday morning, October 6 for Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David after a grueling first week of a monthlong Vatican summit.
David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), was resting at the Pontificio Collegio Filippino, the home of Filipino priests in Rome. He even slept longer because his Mass for Filipino migrants in Rome was at 4 pm yet. “For the first time in many days, I had eight full hours of sleep,” he recounted.
His phone started ringing by mid-morning, but he ignored it because he was preparing his homily for the 4 pm Mass. He also didn’t want to answer the phone because the call was coming from an international number, and he didn’t want expensive charges as he was using his Philippine SIM card.
Was it someone from the Vatican? Perhaps, David said in hindsight.
By 12:22 pm in Rome on Sunday, the procurator at the Collegio Filippino sent him a message on WhatsApp: “Congratulations po.”
“For what, Father Marvin?” David responded.
“Na-announce po na CARDINAL po kayo… (It was announced that you are a CARDINAL…),” the procurator said.
“Joke?”
The procurator then sent him a video of Pope Francis reading the name of David as among 21 new cardinals of the Catholic Church. It was a surprise announcement by the Pope during his weekly Angelus prayer at a window of the papal apartments overlooking Saint Peter’s Square.
David could only answer, “Ha?”
“Then I began to receive a deluge of messages. It felt like being caught in a whirlwind,” he wrote in a Facebook post that he also sent to Rappler via private message around 2 am (Manila time) on Monday, October 7.
“I put down the phone and did a five-minute breathing exercise, which instantly calmed me down,” he recalled. “Now it felt like Elijah standing by the mouth of a cave and feeling a soft breeze that penetrated my soul and prepared me for this new chapter of my life and ministry as a bishop, as a servant of God’s people.”
“I said, ‘Okay, Lord. My life is in your hands.’”
David, 65, will be the 10th Filipino cardinal since the first one, Cardinal Rufino Santos, was named in 1960.
Born in Betis, Guagua, Pampanga, David is an internationally trained Bible scholar who is known for his defense of human rights in the Philippines, especially during the Duterte war on drugs. He obtained his doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and attended the Jesuit-run San Jose Seminary based in Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City.
When his appointment is formalized in a consistory on December 8, he will be one of the close advisers of the Pope and will also get to elect the pontiff’s successor.
He will be one of three active Filipino cardinals, or those who are below the age of 80 and can participate in a papal election called a conclave. The two other active Filipino cardinals are Luis Antonio Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery of Evangelization at the Vatican, and Jose Advincula, who replaced Tagle as archbishop of Manila.
To better understand the significance of the title of cardinal, check out the number of cardinals in the nearly 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church: only 235 as of September 28.
Of this number, only 122 are classified as cardinal electors, or those who can elect the Pope’s successor when he dies or resigns.
In the next conclave, unless it happens before December 8 (knock on wood!), at least three of the votes cast will be from Filipinos: one of them from “Cardinal Ambo.” – Rappler.com
