Tagle believers say he’ll still become Pope someday

SAN PABLO CITY—People who personally knew Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle in his hometown, Imus City in Cavite, said they supported the cardinal although he was not elected Pope.

“Manalo o matalo (Win or lose), it’s God’s will,” said 69-year-old Vicky Ignacio, a worker at Imus Cathedral who had treated Tagle like her own son.

Tagle’s cousin, who refused to be named when interviewed in Imus, said Tagle might not be the Pope right now, “but has all the chances of becoming one someday, not only because he is young.”

“We’re sure he’ll make a good Pope. He stands firm on issues like the RH (reproductive health law) and the sex scandals, but was never confrontational. He is more ‘evangelical,'” the cousin said.

Relatives had wished Tagle would become a Pope but were afraid of not seeing him as often as they do now. “Just imagine, he’ll be attending to the whole world,” the cousin said.

Tagle’s newly gained “international stature” for being considered a “papabile” in the conclave that elected Argentine Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio as the new Pope bodes well for the Church in the Philippines, an activist priest said.

Even if he was not elected Pope, “Chito (Tagle’s nickname) has reached an international stature [that gives him] an opportunity to bring fresh air to the Philippine Catholic Church,” said Fr. Robert Reyes.

Reyes and Tagle were classmates at San Jose Seminary in Quezon City.

Reyes, interviewed a day before it was known that a new Pope had been elected, said Tagle had that “sense of humor that can heal broken priests.”

“He will not condemn you, make you feel you’re such a bad person or you’re beyond redemption, but he will give you hope. That’s what we need right now,” said Reyes, known as the running priest.

He said he and Tagle might not be in agreement on certain issues, like the reproductive health law, but they did not “adversely” react to each other.

In one of the alumni homecomings in the seminary, Reyes remembered Tagle as saying: “Robert and I are quite different. I’m the flying bishop, most of the time in my luggage flying from one meeting to another, while Robert keeps running.”

Reyes earned the “running priest” moniker because he used running events to dramatize his political and environmental advocacies.