Pala-isip

TORONTO - Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been selected as the new pope. Bergoglio, 76, has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests. The archbishop of Buenos Aires reportedly got the second-most votes after Joseph Ratzinger in the 2005 papal election, and he has long specialized in the kind of pastoral work that some say is an essential skill for the next pope. In a lifetime of teaching and leading priests in Latin America, which has the largest share of the world's Catholics, Bergoglio has shown a keen political sensibility as well as the kind of self-effacing humility that fellow cardinals value highly. Bergoglio is known for modernizing an Argentine church that had been among the most conservative in Latin America. He will be known as Pope Francis. Read it on Global News: Global News | Jorge Mario Bergoglio has been chosen as the new pope.

The fight regarding the RH Bill is heating up specially during the Holy Week. With President Aquino's support of the RH Bill. Several Catholic priest have floated the idea of excommunicating the President. In an article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz and Fr. Jerry Oblepias, the diocesan director of the Family Life Ministry in Laguna, both questioned the quality of Mr. Aquino’s Catholicism for supporting the controversial reproductive health bill. Oblepias in particular said Mr. Aquino was a “bad Catholic” with a “conscience that is not well-formed.” Cruz called the President “anti-Christian” for saying that he was prepared to be expelled from the Church if that is what supporting the reproductive health bill would entail. He said that, "There are 2 ways for someone to be excommunicated. Abortion or harming the pope. But just in case the President signs the bill into law…he will not be excommunicated. Unless, if the church proves that...

An article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that Catholic educational institutions are seeking exemption from a provision in the new Magna Carta of Women banning the dismissal of unwed mothers from employment or school. Monsignor Gerardo Santos, national president of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), said the CEAP would ask that a provision on such an exemption be inserted into the new law’s implementing rules and regulations. He said the chairman of the Commission on Higher Education(CHEd), Emmanuel Angeles, has said he would support the CEAP’s participation in the writing of the IRR. “It is important that we respect the religious affiliation of these institutions, the schools, or company the persons [concerned] belong to,” Santos told the CEAP national convention at the Manila Hotel. Wow...how narrow minded can people be. Even the CHEd chairman is stupid for supporting the CEAP. As head of a government institution, he should be the first to unde...