With millions of YouTube views and hits on Spotify and iTunes, a group of young nun rockers plays one of their biggest gigs next week, and thousands of Catholics, including the pope himself, will lap it up.
"Dear Pope Francis," 10-year-old Mohammed begins, "Will the world be again as it was in the past?"
It was the tiny car that whisked Pope Francis around Philadelphia and wowed Americans reared on gas-guzzling automobiles. Now it's being offered for auction to lesser mortals with deep pockets.
Except for a friend who chose to fly out to Hong Kong to sit out the papal visit, I don’t know of anyone else who isn’t ebullient about the coming of Pope Francis to the Philippines, or isn’t interested in it, at the very least. It’s as if this very public event is bringing a personal milestone to each person’s life, no matter one’s religion or atheism or agnosticism.
We love Pope Francis because he’s kind, generous and also undeniably cool. You can even say he’s a rock star....
“A pope who supports science, birth control, respects gays, divorced couples and unmarried couples? Not bad. Not bad at all.”
The “Vatican official” who is helping Pope Francis practice and polish his English for his apostolic visit to Sri Lanka and the Philippines next week is American Greg Burke, a former Time magazine and Fox News journalist who has been working with the Vatican State Secretariat as communications adviser since 2012 during the papacy of Benedict XVI.
After playing many times to a full house in Angeles City, a musical about Pope Francis is moving to Metro Manila to be performed on the national stage for some 1,000 Filipino and Asian bishops.
Three decades ago, I predicted that if the Catholic Church wouldn’t make changes in many of its beliefs, by 2032 its institution would become irrelevant.
Although the dining details for the much-awaited visit of Pope Francis in January have yet to be planned, a caterer is planning to delight the papal palate with various versions of the popular chicken adobo identified as being Filipino.
