Pope Francis supported him when he took over the president. Now he votes in a conclave

“Even in my most amazing fantasy, I didn’t think it would happen,” said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, describing the day when he found out that he had been appointed cardinals.

He talked to the BBC in his cathedral in Kalukan, on the outskirts of the Philippine capital of Manila. The next day he left Rome to join the conclave, one of the three cardinals from the country, which will take part in the choice of the next pope.

“Usually you could expect the archbishops to become cardinals, but I am only a modest bishop from a small diocese where most people are slum residents, city poor ones, you know.

“But I thought that it may be for Pope Francis that we have more cardinals who are really justified there.”

Cardinal David only works at work for only five months, after his surprise in December last year. But in a sense, he embodies the inheritance of the late Pontiff in his country.

Pope Francis set himself the goal of attracting the Catholic Church, which he believed, lost his common touch again closer to people.

“Api Amba”, as Cardinal David kindly calls his congregation, suits this mission, having spent life, campaigning for the poor and marginalized.

In the Philippines, the largest Roman Catholic population in Asia, almost 80% of 100 million, and the third largest in the world.

This is one of the reasons that the Philippine Cardinal Louis Antonio Tagl is supposed to be a pile, or a leader who replaced Pope Francis – they also spoke about the candidate in the last papal conclave 12 years ago.

The country is considered a bright place for the Roman Catholic Church, where the faith is strong, its rituals dug into the fabric of society.

However, the church is facing the wind there. His doctrines about the divorce and planning of the family challenge politicians, and the new charismatic churches win conversations.

Pope Francis helped to restore morals in the Philippine Church, although he did not offer answers to these problems, except to be a more welcoming diversity and calling the clergy to be more responding to the needs of the poor.

But those who are in the activist wing of the church felt encouraged by his support.

For Cardinal David, this support was critical when he faced his greatest test, during the war with the former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

He took me to see the board he set before his cathedral in memory of Kiean delus Santos, a 17-year-old boy from his diocese, which was killed by police in August 2017.

KIAN was only one of the many thousands killed in the Duterte company – the estimates range from 6,300 to 30,000. What he was different from the majority was that the usual police justification, that he was armed and resistant, contradicted eyewitnesses and videos from the security camera.

Police killed him when he asked for his life. In the end, three officers were convicted of murder, a rare account of accountability in addiction.

The Cardinal is still noticeably affected by the hundreds of murders that occurred in his diocese-classes of low-income neighborhoods, characteristic of areas aimed at the police, in their notorious Tohan, or “knocking” against alleged drug dealers and users.

“It was too much to see the corpses on the left and the right,” says Cardinal David.

“And you know if I asked people what they thought, you know why these people were aimed. They said they are drug consumers. I said that? What?

He began to offer the shrine to those who were afraid that they were in police hit records and then drug surgery programs, hoping that it could protect them.

He also did something that the church generally did not do several months: it openly criticized the drug war as illegal and immoral.

As a result, he received a lot of death threats. President Duterte accused him of taking drugs and spoke about the beheading. The government also had charged with theft, although they were ultimately refused.

In those difficult years, Cardinal David found that Rome had a powerful fan.

In 2019, Pope Francis took him to the city to give him a special blessing, saying he knew what was happening in his diocese and urged him to remain safe.

When they met again in 2023, and he reminded the Pope that he was still alive, he said that the Pontiff laughed and said to him, “You have not yet called to the martyrdom!”

The role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has changed in 500-year history in the archipelago.

It was closely linked to the Spanish conquest, the Spanish monks who act as in fact colonial administrators, and the church becomes a great landlord. When the US replaced Spain as a colonial leader in 1898, performing the division of the church and the state, the political influence of the Catholic clergy decreased.

But the church remained allegiance to the majority of the population; Already today, after the invasion made by charismatic Protestant churches, almost 80% of the Philippines belong to the Roman Catholic.

Since independence in 1946, the church had a difficult connection with the authorities. His deep roots and status of the institution made him an influential player who sounded political factions, but also needs their support to protect their interests.

In the 1970s and the 80s, the relationship began to change when the young Pablo David and many other figures of the older churches today studied to enter the priesthood.

It was an era of “Liberation Theology”, which came out of Latin America and claimed that the duty of the clergy to fight the broad poverty and injustice around them.

When President Markas then, the father of the current president of the Philippines, declared martial law in 1972 and started a prison and killing his critics, some priests even went underground to join the armed resistance.

But the hierarchy of the church continued what it called “critical cooperation” with the dictatorship of Marcos.

This changed dramatically in February 1986, when Archbishop Manila, Cardinal Jaime sin, urged people to go out and oppose Marcos, causing the famous “power of the people” who abandoned the president.

The dramatic sin repressed this role in 2001, when he helped overthrow another president, Joseph Estada.

Subsequently, the Church’s leaders were charged with introducing the successor of the Variety, Gloria Macapagal Arroo, partly to get their support in the confrontation of political and social pressure to expand family planning and divorce legalization.

And they reluctantly condemned President Duterte drugs because, despite the horrific human expenses, she remained popular in the Philippine public, at least from the poor areas where the murder took place.

Almost 40 years after its main role in the breakdown of the Marcos regime, the influence of the church again seems to decrease as it was done a century ago.

For example, the Hot opposition of the Church failed to prevent Congress by the Philippines passing the 2012 reproductive health law that made family planning easily accessible.

This is despite the fact that many Philippine Catholics remain conservative on issues such as gender and divorce, says Jael Carnellio, a sociologist who wondered about Catholicism in the Philippines.

According to him, the defeat of the Church for the Planning of the family testifies to its diminished fall of national politics.

“The Catholic Church was virtually postponed during the Duterte presidency. When Ferdinand Bongbong ranked with the president in 2022, many Catholic leaders and institutions disagreed and even supported the opposition. But Marcos still won.”

Many Philippines welcomes this, including Cardinal David.

“This is not the Church’s business to manage, and it is not a government business to govern the church,” he said.

“But we can supplement each other – I cannot say that we will be apolitical. As long as we adhere to our role of moral and spiritual leader, we can give recommendations, even about political and economic issues.”

Even this more limited view of the Church’s proper role, however, faced the opposition.

Thirteen years after overcoming church objections against the bill on reproductive health, the Congress of the Philippines is now trying to adopt a bill that legalizes the divorce and not yet according to the church.

“I do not expect that they will change my official doctrine, but in my work the legislator I try to solve the problems that the Philippines face, and I do not want them to intervene in my work. This is against our Constitution of the legislation for the benefit of any religion,” says heraraldin Roman, the first member of the Transgender.

Practicing Catholic, she attributes Pope Francis to create a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people with their statement “Who I am to judge”.

“Now no one is wrong in my church,” she says.

But she object to the Catholic Church lobbying the bill on a divorce, which, she said, will release thousands of Philippine women who have been fierce marriages.

“The Church can try to become a Catholic to get married. But in the end, it is a couple’s decision, and even the church cannot intervene in this decision.”

Other problems include a congregation that is increasingly disconnected. While the number of Roman Catholics over the last three decades has only fallen slightly, the number that visited the Mass, at least once a week, has halved, which is just over a third of the respondents recently.

Then there are various scandals related to the Catholic Church, especially sexual violence to minors, which critics say that Pope Francis, while he was dealing with this issue, did not do enough to address.

Cardinal David recalled how President Duterte “loved” a book called “The Altar of Secrets”, exposing the scandals in the Philippine Church, and as he says, “Oh, these hypocrites.

But, he adds, defensiveness is not how the church can regain its authority.

“It must be humility. As Pope Francis advised, you dare to be vulnerable. Daves to criticize. Try not to stay on this podium where people cannot contact you, show your humanity.