Archbishop Emeritus of Manila and chosen by Francisco as a pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, for more than twenty Cardinal 67 years is one of the most significant figures of Asian Catholicism. Bright preacher, the Gospel comments weekly in a very popular television broadcast. He considers that “the Church is renewed only when it is a missionary, that is, when it testifies to the kingdom of God in dialogue with cultures and other religions.”
Milan (Asianews) – A theologian highly valued by three pontiffs, who assigned great responsibility positions. With its 67 years, this prelate is, for at least twenty years, an outstanding figure of the Church in Asia and, as former president of Caritas Internationalis and Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization has visited Catholic communities in every corner of the world. These coordinates, by themselves, would be enough to end the speakers (quite hot) that for days surrounding – in the (little significant) “social conclave” – to Cardinal Filipino Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle.
As in all the profiles that we have published these days, Asianews is not interested in playing to predict whether or not Tagle will be the next successor of Pedro. We care rather to help understand who is really this prelate to which millions of Filipinos from all over the world have listened to the Gospel for years through their very popular weekly television program The Word Exposed, and who, with their smile, invites them to make them recognize as “Easter people” in their Christian testimony.
Monsignor “Chito” – as it is popularly known in the Philippines – was born in 1957 in Imus, in the immense Metropolitan area of Manila, in a Catholic family, where one of the grandmothers was an immigrant of Chinese origin. The future Cardinal was 13 when Paul VI visited Manila in November 1970: “Stretching his back and neck well – he remembered in the preface of a book dedicated to the trips of Montini – kept his eyes well open to see the Pope when his car will pass in front of us. And in the end he arrived: a man dressed in white, a face that radiated peace, joy and serenity.”
-That boy could not know – at that time – that precisely the teaching of Paul VI would deeply mark his theological studies. Ordered priest for the Diocese of Imus in 1982, three years later he was sent by his bishop to the Catholic University of America in Washington, where he dedicated his doctoral thesis precisely to the issue of episcopal collegiality in the teaching and in the action of Pope Montini. In 1997 John Paul II appointed him, with only 40 years, a member of the International Theological Commission, chaired at that time by Joseph Ratzinger. The following year he participated as an expert in the Special Assembly of the Synod for Asia, the first of many synods in which he has been the protagonist.
In October 2001, Pope Wojtyla appointed him Bishop of Imus and his ordination was personally chaired by Cardinal Jaime Sin. During this first episcopal ministry, in the field of FABC – the Federation of Episcopal Conferences of Asia -, the day of Asian Youth was carried out in its diocese, which periodically brings together the young Catholics of the entire continent in one of their countries.
Benedict XVI – who knew him well because they had worked together in the International Theological Commission – Archbishop of Manila designated him in 2011 and created him Cardinal in his last town hall of November 2012. Notable preacher, Tagle is a man who also knows how to speak through gestures. In 2016, for example, he celebrated the epiphany to the emergency town of Tondo, which had received the historic visit of Pablo VI. A few months later – on the eve of the elections that Rodrigo Duterte would be winning – on Holy Thursday he washed the president of the Electoral Commission, to sensitize about the fraud problem. In 2015, Pope Francis received in a trip marked by the immense crowd that gathered for Mass in the Park Luneta.
That same year he was elected president by the Assembly of Caritas Internationalis and directed the federation of the more than 160 ecclesial solidarity organizations until November 2022, when Pope Francis assigned him a commissioner “with the aim of improving his management standards and procedures”, which led to the assembly that he later chose as successor to Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi. On the other hand, Bergoglio had already called Tagle to Rome in 20219 to entrust the crucial function of the Congregation for the evangelization of the peoples, the Vatican Dicastery that supervises the dioceses of the mission territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. But it is the first to say that Today the mission goes far beyond a geographical location: “Today the ‘peoples’ are no longer in distant places. They can be our relatives, the co -workers, the digital followers,” he said a few weeks ago in an intervention in Pime. And he added that precisely Asia’s experience shows that “the Church is renewed in its identity when it is a missionary, that is, when it gives testimony of the kingdom of God in dialogue with cultures, with religions and with the poor of the world. When it is a small flock in the midst of the great religious traditions and in the middle of a young and poor people, the Church seeks the renewal that Jesus offers.”
