“Filipinos can only pray that Cardinal Tagle could somehow be the next Pope, indeed.”
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is rumored to be a strong bet for the Papacy, and, if chosen, would be the first Filipino and the first Asian Pope. I doubt he will make it.
The papacy has always been reserved for Italians. Few Popes were non-Italians.
Of 266 Popes, 217 have been Italians or 82 percent; 16 were French or 6 percent; six were Germans, five were from Syria, four from Greece, three each from the Holy Land and Tunisia; two each from Croatia, Turkey, Spain, and Portugal.
One each from England, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Poland.
Cardinal Tagle is the titular leader of the Philippine Catholic Church (84 percent of 1,214 million Filipinos are Catholic). He has been dubbed the “Asian Francis.”
The most recent reports on Tagle’s rumored impending papacy appeared Aug, 5, 2022 and Aug. 8, 2022 in the UK-based Catholic Herald, a 134-year-old publication.
As rumors grow about a looming papal resignation, Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (is) “fast-emerging as a frontrunner to succeed Pope Francis,” said the Catholic Herald on Aug. 8, 2022.
Reported the paper: Cardinal Tagle “is seen as representing the Church’s progressive wing, having criticized previously ‘harsh words’ against LGBT Catholics.
“Such language and the message in the UK can perhaps be set apart from Hungary’s Cardinal Erdő, another front-runner for the Papacy.
“Back in 2015—as Pope Francis was calling on Catholics to take in refugees—the Cardinal Erdő said taking in refugees would amount to human trafficking. Yet, the Hungarian cleric later expressed concern about tendencies to turn religions against one another, and in an interview with Valasz On Line in 2019, asked rhetorically: ‘Can a country, a continent, be called a Christian? I wouldn’t emphasize whiteness as a Catholic, though’.”
“Cardinal Tagle seems very much of the school of Pope Francis. As Niall Gooch wrote for UnHerd: “As an Argentinian Jesuit, the type of villain that looms large in his [Pope Francis’] mental furniture is the aggressive and chauvinistic nationalist leader, who cements his own power with cynical attacks on foreigners and the enemy within.’
“In the Pope’s eyes, ‘a Christian country and culture is not one preoccupied with its own integrity and its own survival, but one which makes an unshakable political imperative from the divine commands to welcome the stranger and to recognize all men as brothers.”
Filipinos can only pray that Cardinal Tagle could somehow be the next Pope, indeed. Amen.
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