Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle: Asia’s bet to become the next pope is leaving it all up to God
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Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is known as the “Asian Francis” for having what many see as the affable charm of the everyman.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
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SINGAPORE – If bookmakers and crypto investors are right on the money, Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle may soon become the next head of the 1.4 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church.
He is an odds-on favourite to succeed Pope Francis and become the first Asian pontiff in modern times. British bookmaker William Hill has his odds at 3-1 Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin
There is even a video game featuring a fantasy football team of cardinals
Choosing the next pope, however, is not as simple as running the numbers and balancing the odds.
It is an arcane process shrouded in centuries-old traditions and rituals. This process is set to start on May 7, when 133 cardinals will meet in a conclave, sequestered inside the majesty of the Sistine Chapel, to cast their votes.
In this game for the Catholic throne, there is no certainty. Being an early favourite may even be a drag.
A case in point: Many bookmakers had not even counted then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as among the front runners in the race for the papacy in 2013. Yet, after giving a powerful four-minute speech and two days into the conclave, he emerged as Pope Francis.
This is why the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has asked Filipinos to stop campaigning for Cardinal Tagle.
“It’s not prudent for the people to publicly push for Cardinal Tagle... The independence of the electors should be respected, and the least that we can do is to pray for Cardinal Tagle and the rest of the cardinal electors,” CBCP executive secretary Jerome Secillano said in a statement.
A priest’s prank
Still, there is so much going for Cardinal Tagle.
He is Asian, and he comes from what some call “Asia’s Catholic lung” – the Philippines has the region’s largest Catholic population, with 88 million Catholics out of a national population of about 110 million.
Asia – along with Africa – is where Catholicism is growing.
In Europe, meanwhile, church attendance is dropping and growth has been near-stagnant.
Born into an upper middle-class family with Chinese heritage, Cardinal Tagle was raised in the city of Imus, about two hours south of the Philippine capital Manila.
He wanted to be a doctor, but a priest’s prank set him on a different path.
“My mind was set on becoming a doctor,” he said in a 2019 interview with TV channel Shalom World.
“But then, one of the priests at my parish played a trick on me. He said there’s a university offering scholarships, and that if I was interested, I can apply. I can take a battery of exams and, if I qualify, then I can become a doctor with very little cost. So, yes, I grabbed the opportunity. But it was the entrance exam to a seminary.”
He added: “It started as a joke, but it was a joke that jolted me... It got me thinking: Do I really want to become a doctor or does God have other plans for me?”
He was ordained in 1982 at the age of 24, and later wrote his doctoral thesis on Pope Paul VI at the Catholic University of America.
In the following decades, he was named archbishop of Manila. He was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
Pope Francis in 2019 transferred Cardinal Tagle from Manila and appointed him head of the Church’s missionary arm, formally known as the Dicastery for Evangelisation.
In Francis’ shadow
Pope Francis’ shadow looms large over Cardinal Tagle. He has, after all, been dubbed the “Asian Francis”.
Like the late pontiff, he has the charisma of the affable everyman.
He prefers that friends call him by his nickname, “Chito”.
Like Pope Francis did when he was an archbishop, Cardinal Tagle went around his diocese when he was a bishop by taking public transport, preferring to ride a jeepney, or just cycle to work.
Like Pope Francis, he does not aspire to be the centre of the Catholic universe, and preaches the virtues of simplicity and humility as loudly as he can. That has largely been a product of his upbringing, rooted in the values of frugality and hard work.
“You earn, but if you splurge on things that are not important, it amounts to nothing... We combined hard work with priorities... where you could be simple and not aspire for a lifestyle that is beyond your means,” he said, describing his childhood in a 2018 interview with news programme 60 Minutes.
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, like the late Pope Francis, preaches the virtues of simplicity and humility as loudly as he can.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Like Pope Francis, he sees the damning impact of climate change on the planet, and has criticised the “harsh” stance adopted by Catholic clerics towards gay people, divorced people and unwed mothers that he said has caused lasting harm.
“If we look at diversity as a problem, it will be a problem,” he said in 2019. “But if we look at diversity as a gift, where we could exchange gifts, where in humility admit what I do not possess and appreciate what others possess, then we will need each other. There’s neutrality. There’s interdependence.”
Unlike many traditionalist clergymen, he has embraced social media as a tool for evangelisation.
He has more than 600,000 followers on Facebook, and about 39,000 on X.
“I’m convinced that this is the area to go if you want to bring the good news, especially to the youth today,” he said, as he was promoting the 2019 Asian Youth Day.
Videos of the 67-year-old cardinal singing, dancing enthusiastically, cracking dad jokes and being goofy on stage or from the pulpit have drawn hundreds of thousands of views.
He is seen as the “papabile” – papal contender – favoured by Gen Z.
“He’s a great communicator... He is able to adjust his language according to his audience,” Mr Paterno Esmaquel II, who reports on Philippine church affairs for online news site Rappler, told The Straits Times.
“He can talk to theologians, but when he is speaking to ordinary Catholics, his tone, and even the structure of his speech, changes,” said Mr Esmaquel.
He said this is the secret sauce behind Cardinal Tagle’s wide appeal, especially among Gen Zs.
The cardinal said he is aware of the “ambivalence and some of the pitfalls” that plague social media.
Right now, for instance, an online campaign by Catholic conservatives is distributing an edited video on X of the cardinal singing John Lennon’s Imagine.
They are attacking him for singing what they insist is an “anti-religion” song, even though Imagine is widely regarded as an ode to tolerance, peaceful coexistence and generosity.
X put out a note clarifying that Cardinal Tagle “sang an altered and shortened version of this song which doesn’t include anything against religion, heaven, Christ”, et cetera.
Despite the online lynching, the cardinal said social media, if put to good use, “could be a vehicle for evangelisation and also for bringing more people to the Lord”.
Doubters and naysayers
But within the Philippine Catholic Church, there are those who say he does not go far enough.
“I think he’s a moderate on the issues of justice, of sexual ethics. Even in the ethics of computers and AI (artificial intelligence), he would not take a very radical or progressive point of view,” Reverend Robert Reyes, who studied with Cardinal Tagle, told Australia’s ABC News.
“He would study all the existing church positions, and more or less synthesise them and come up with a very balanced and middle-of-the-road position.”
Father Reyes said this was on full display when Cardinal Tagle declined to criticise head-on former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war that left tens of thousands dead.
“In terms of addressing controversy and addressing contentious issues, Cardinal Chito would not venture into dangerous waters,” Father Reyes said.
The cardinal has also frustrated progressives and liberals by his steadfast defence of core church tenets. He has opposed Philippine government efforts to provide access to contraceptives and has kept an ambiguous position on the issue of blessing same-sex couples.
On the child sex abuse scandal
But he has stopped short of backing the filing of criminal cases against accused clergymen, leaning instead on the “canonical process” meant to ensure that the abuses do not happen again on such a massive scale.
He has one more piece of baggage that blemishes his reputation as a capable administrator.
Between 2015 and 2022, he led Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of over 160 Catholic relief, social service and development organisations around the world.
In 2022, Pope Francis fired its entire leadership after accusations of bullying and humiliation of employees, and appointed a commissioner to run it.
Cardinal Tagle, who was also removed from his role, had been nominally president but was not involved in the day-to-day operations, which were overseen by a lay director-general.
Announcing the Pope’s dramatic decision, the cardinal told a meeting of the confederation that the changes were a moment for “facing our failures”.
‘Francis 2.0’ or a new kind of pontiff
Cardinal Tagle’s fate ultimately rests on whether the cardinals want a Pope Francis 2.0 or a “Francis-lite”, or a totally new kind of pontiff.
Do they want to mend rifts within the Church by reaching out to conservatives and rolling back Pope Francis’ more radical initiatives, push on with reforms the late pontiff set in motion, or find a middle ground?
Vatican watchers say the momentum is towards unity over rupture, and that diplomacy may trump geography
While Catholicism is growing in Asia and Africa, Europe still has the largest voting bloc in the College of Cardinals, with 53 cardinals, compared with 27 from Asia and Oceania, 21 from South and Central America, 16 from North America and 18 from Africa.
Italians make up the biggest single national bloc, with 17 cardinals, compared with 10 from the US and seven from Brazil.
“The new pope will have to redesign the Church in a world on fire,” Professor Alberto Melloni, who specialises in Christian history, told the Corriere di Bologna newspaper.
“Pope Francis... shifted the Church’s attention to the outside world,” said Mr John Thavis, former Rome bureau chief for the Catholic News Service, who covered three papacies.
“Some cardinals will now be tempted to pick an insider, someone with the skills to manage church affairs more carefully and quietly than Francis did.”
But then again, when it comes to the conclave and its inner workings, all bets are off.
“I believe that if Francis has been the pope of surprises, this conclave will be too, as it is not at all predictable,” Spanish Cardinal Jose Cobo told El Pais newspaper in an interview published on April 27.
Cardinal Tagle himself – having not shaken the “impostor syndrome” that has dogged him – often insists on writing himself off.
“If I were God, I would not choose me to be a bishop or cardinal,” he told 60 Minutes in 2018, just before he was relocated to the Vatican.
But there is always that caveat.
“But since I’m not God, God sees something in me that I don’t see in myself, and I just have to trust God’s knowledge in me,” he said.
With additional reporting from Mara Cepeda, Philippines correspondent.
