Shoes as message
“Didn’t the dark leather shoes that Pope Francis wore at Tuesday’s installation rites remind you of Imelda Marcos?,” a friend asked. No. Should they?
Imelda jettisoned 1,080 pairs of shoes in Malacanang, when the Marcoses fled “People Power”. Her shoes were a tutorial, this friend insisted. Those overstuffed shoe stacks symbolized dreams of paupered Filipinos for better tomorrows which Imelda embodied.
Tell that to Buenos Aires residents who gifted Cardinal Jorge Borgolio with a pair of shoes. Dump your down-at-the-heel shoes, they told “Padre Jorge”. Alexander Stille wrote in New Yorker. Use this new pair. Borgolio, who’d booked a return flight, economy class, from the conclave, wore them as the new pontiff.
BBC contrasted Francis shoes with red leather loafers that Benedict XVI used . Those were cobbled by Adriano Stefanelli. Shoes were one of Pope Francis messages by action.
After election, he waved aside the mozzeta or red papal cape. He wore instead a plain white cassock before stepping out into the loggia to greet the people. He opted for a plain “Fisherman’s Ring” and a simple pectoral cross. “There’s enough room here for 300,” he said of the papal apartments.”I don’t need all this space.”
He discarded prepared texts by Vatican bureaucrats. Without mercy, the world would crumble, an old woman told him. “I asked her if she’d taught theology at Gregorian University,” he joked about the Jesuit university in Rome .
Stripping away frills meant “showing loving concern for (all ) especially children, the elderly, those in need, who are often the last we think of.” He linked that challenge to “respecting the environment…Those who have positions of responsibility in economic, political and social life” must be protectors of creation…which open up a horizon of hope.”
“Where is the soaring eagle circling above the land or the colorful kalaw ( hornbill )?” asked Philippine bishops in their 1998 pastoral. “Now they are silenced.” The scars on nature will lead inevitably to an increase in political and social unrest. “This is…the ultimate pro-life issue. Many religions, including the Church, have been slow to respond to the ecological crisis…There is a great need for a Filipino theology of creation… in preaching, catechetical programs, schools. “At the root of the problem we see an exploitative mentality, which is at variance with the Gospel of Jesus. This expresses itself in acts of violence against fellow Filipinos…”
Recall Fr.Charlito Colendres and the 2004 “Yoyong” storm that hit Aurora and Quezon.. Father Chia flayed illegal logging in Aurora . “This morning, he was restless and deeply affected in his homily,” Carmelite nuns in Infanta recall. He’d seen 54,000 board feet of timber waiting for release. But logging is banned”. By evening, flash floods rose as high as second story homes. Evacuees poured into Carmel. “Hot logs smashed people to death. That included Fr. Chia who was then helping to evacuate children.
It’s been 21 years since three men gunned down Fr. Nerilito Satur of Bukidnon. As a deputized forest ranger, Fr. Neri confiscated hot timber. Refusing to buckle, the bishop, now retired Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, authorized 41 priests to be deputized as forest guards. The Armed Forces filed charges in October 1991 against Sgt. Catalino Gabison and three others Guinoyoran CAFGU garrison : Datu Bantu Domia,, Crispin Onor, and Allan Cesar Abesta, CAFGU member—- and did little else. Impunity allows the guilty to go free.
Pope Francis’ call for greater environment care comes when scientists’ report that “global temperatures are warmer than at any time in at least 4,000 years,” the New York Times reported Thursday. Over the coming decades, temperatures are likely to surpass levels not seen on the planet since before the last ice age.
“We and other living things can adapt to slower changes,” Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. “It’s the unprecedented speed with which we’re changing the climate that is so worrisome.”
“Trees fail to flower,” Aetas huddled at Bataan told Fr. Shay Cullen. “Bees are disappearing. Storms blow away our nipa huts as never before.” The Aetas echo what scientists elsewhere note. Mean temperatures are rising by 0.14 degrees C per decade,says the UN’s inter-governmental panel on climate change says Since the 1980s, annual mean rainfall increased. “Yet two of the severest droughts ever recorded occurred.”
“All praise be yours, my Lord, for Brother Sun, who brings the day,” the 13th century monk Francis of Assissi wrote in “Canticle of the Sun”. Praise too for Sister Moonthrough whom you give us light….Praise too for Sister Death whose embrace no mortal can escape…” The number of shoes don’t matter.
