Cardinal Tagle: ‘Holiness is real’
Filipino Catholics gathered at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City to join the Catholic world in celebrating the canonizations of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. Cardinal Antonio Tagle, Manila archbishop, celebrated the Mass and stressed in his homily that even ordinary people can be holy, just like the two new saints.Video by INQUIRER.net’s Bong Lozada and edited by INQUIRER.net’s Hotaru Niitsu
MANILA, Philippines—As millions of Catholics cheered and rejoiced at Saint Peter’s Square in Vatican City, thousands of Filipinos clapped in unison with their brothers inside a “living relic.”
And just as Pope Francis led the faithful in the canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II in one of the Catholic religion’s most hallowed ground, Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle led the Filipino faithful in a humbler Smart-Araneta Coliseum or as one of the new saints coined it, the “colloseo of papal audiences.”
“Don’t feel bad if you’re not in Rome, in 1981, Pope John Paul II came here, to this coliseum, this is a living relic,” Tagle addressed the thousands who filled up the historic arena Sunday.
Living holiness
On the canonization of the two revolutionary popes, Tagle said that their enshrinement to the hall of saints was the “declaration of the holiness, the sanctity, and the heroic virtues of ordinary men and women.”
John XXIII was the pope who instigated the Second Vatican Council in 1962 which opened up the Catholic Church to the modern world, and John Paul II was the pope who instituted World Youth Day in 1984 which gave importance to young people became saints on the Sunday of Divine Mercy.
Tagle said that even the “ordinary” persons such as Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli and Karol Wojtyla could become saints through the holiness from God.
“It is good to celebrate a canonization to proclaim to the world that holiness is still real, holiness is a gift of God to us all, to ordinary men and women,” Tagle said.
“We are ordinary baptized people but all of us have been given the grace of holiness and we are called to live in holiness.”
Manila’s Archbishop added that the canonization was a “loud” declaration to the world that “holiness is real.”
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