At lunch with survivors, Pope ‘reduced to silence’

Pope Francis, left, has lunch with survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, the November 2013 storm that leveled entire villages and left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, at the Palo Archbishop’s residence, Philippines, Saturday, Jan. 17, 2015. Francis traveled to the far eastern Philippines to comfort survivors of devastating Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 on Saturday, but cut his own trip short because of another approaching storm. (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, Pool)

The much-anticipated lunch with survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” pushed through Saturday in rain-soaked Palo, in Leyte, and it left Pope Francis “quite shaken.”

Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the Archbishop of Manila who joined the lunch, said the survivors were encouraged to speak directly about their loss, because Typhoon “Amang” had shortened the meeting to just 15 minutes. “I’ll never forget the face of the Holy Father,” an emotional Tagle said. “You can see the Holy Father shaking his head … he was suffering [with the survivors].”

Tagle recalled that he had asked the Pope whether he wanted to say something to the survivors. “But what can we say?” The Pope responded. “Before these 30 survivors, he himself was reduced to silence,” Tagle said.

The Pope did tell the survivors, in Tagle’s recollection: “When I heard about the typhoon two years ago [in November 2013], I offered a Mass for you right away.” The Pope also said that at “my Mass in Manila tomorrow” [Sunday, at the Rizal Park], “the intention is for your departed.