Joker decries Papal Nuncio’s ‘snub’ of Senate

Senator Joker Arroyo on Wednesday criticized Papal Nuncio Edward Joseph Adams for supposedly ignoring a Senate resolution expressing concern for the lack of Filipino cardinals in the country. “We have to put on record that a concern of the Senate on a temporal matter was ignored by the Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See," Arroyo said in a privilege speech on Wednesday. He said three years ago, the Senate adopted Resolution 33 that expressed concern over the “disproportionate" number of Filipino cardinals (three) to the Catholic population of the Philippines (73 million). He said copies of the resolution were transmitted to Adams and the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines. However, he said they never received an answer from the Papal Nuncio. “The Senate resolution was asking only for enlightenment, why we had only three cardinals while countries with lesser Catholic populations had a lot more. Lamentably, the Papal Nuncio did not respond at all to the Senate, as if this chamber did not exist," he said. Arroyo said they had to ask Ambassador Dondie Teehanke to go to the Vatican and seek “enlightenment" from retired Filipino Cardinal Jose Sanchez, who told him that the number of cardinals in a country depends on the number of dioceses. He said Sanchez explained that a country may have a big Catholic population but not have many dioceses because it does not have many priests, therefore it cannot have as many cardinals. “We had to fend for ourselves and get the answers from a retired Filipino cardinal in Rome. We did not get it from the Papal Nuncio to whom it was addressed," he said. - Kimberly Jane Tan/KBK, GMANews.TV