Pope Francis AP FILE PHOTO
VATICAN CITY—Despite having the Pope practically as a close-door neighbor, Filipinos in Rome would like to come home and be among the multitudes of Catholics who would welcome Pope Francis to the Philippines next week.
Even better, they themselves would like to bring Francis to the country.
“If it were possible, the Filipino communities themselves would bring Pope Francis to the Philippines,” said Fr. Gaspar Sigaya, a Filipino priest and the chief archivist in the Roman curia of the Order of Preachers, better known as the Dominicans.
He said that since Rome-based Filipinos couldn’t make it to the country for the Pope’s visit, they have been urging their kin at home to support the apostolic visit, the first by a Pope to the Philippines in 20 years.
“Members of the Filipino community here keep calling their relatives in the Philippines to attend the papal activities and show their support for the Pope and the Church,” Sigaya said.
There are some 110,000 documented Filipinos in Italy, most of them living in Rome and the suburbs around it. Estimates of the number of undocumented workers range from 80,000 to 100,000.
Many of the documented workers are women working as “domestic assistants,” although since 2007, Italy has been accepting a large number of “non-seasonal/regular workers”or professionals and skilled workers, according to the Department of Labor and Employment said.
Filipinos in Italy are noted for their piety and for being regular churchgoers and enthusiastic Church volunteers.
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, there are some 60 Filipino organizations in Italy, most of which are “church-based.”
Josh Bayer, a young Filipino worker in Rome, said that although Italy-based Filipinos couldn’t come home for the visit, they were thrilled by it and would be one with the nation “in the spirit of celebration and thanksgiving.”
He said prayers for the success and safety of the papal visit were constantly offered in Masses of the Filipino communities at Urbaniana and Sacred Heart churches in Rome.
Bayer added that while Filipinos in Rome were used to seeing the Pope during his Wednesday audience and when he would pray the Angelus before St. Peter’s Square every Sunday noon, it would be nothing short of “thrilling” to see the “representative of Christ” again visit the Philippines, the Catholic bulwark in Asia.
In an interview with the United States-based Catholic News Agency, Fr. Gregory Gaston said Filipinos considered the visit of a Pope nothing less than a visit by Jesus Christ himself.
“For us Filipinos, the Pope is really the representative of Jesus on earth, so it’s like Jesus coming to the Philippines,” said Gaston, rector of the Pontificio Collegio Filippino.
Gaston, who will accompany Pope Francis on his flights to and from Asia next week as a correspondent of the Catholic radio station Radyo Veritas, said Filipinos viewed the Pope as “a father.”
“It’s like a father visiting his children,” he said. “The people will listen to him, the people will try to see him as much as they can and experience his message of mercy and compassion.”
Gaston added that the Pope’s visit should reaffirm the important role of the Philippine Church in the evangelization of Asia.
Filipinos comprise 60 percent of the total Catholic population in Asia, according to Gaston in an interview with the Inquirer. He said this represented the strong potential of Filipinos to evangelize Asia and the world.