I see that an old friend of the Philippines is up to his “old tricks” again —- and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Archbishop Antonio Franco, now the papal nuncio to Israel (and Cyprus), has figured in another religious/political controversy.

John Allen writes:

Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Vatican’s nuncio in Israel, has announced that he will attend the annual Holocaust Memorial day event at Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust museum, after the museum indicated it is willing to reconsider a caption of Pope Pius XII that Franco found offensive.

Avner Shalev, President of Yad Vashem, sent a letter to Franco late in the week stating that the museum will “reconsider the way in which Pius XII is presented.” In response, Franco indicated that he will be present for the events Sunday evening.

Apparently, Franco did not only find the caption offensive; he backed it up with one of the more potent weapons in diplomacy’s limited armory: he threatened to stage a boycott.

Filipinos may remember Franco, who served in the Philippines for over six years, as the man who allegedly gave the Philippine bishops a tongue-lashing in July 2005 —- a warning against politicized action that allegedly led to the bishops’ tempered statement on the Garcillano crisis.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

THE dictionary defines Holocaust as follows:

holocaust |ˈhäləˌkôst; ˈhōlə-| noun 1 destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, esp. caused by fire or nuclear war : a nuclear holocaust | the threat of imminent holocaust. • ( the Holocaust) the mass murder of Jews under the German Nazi regime during the period 1941–45. More than 6 million European Jews, as well as members of other persecuted groups, such as gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered at concentration camps such as Auschwitz. 2 historical a Jewish sacrificial offering that is burned completely on an altar. ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French holocauste, via late Latin from Greek holokauston, from holos ‘whole’ + kaustos ‘burned’ (from kaiein ‘burn’ ).

The mass murder of students at Virginia Tech in the USA was subsequently reported by two Filipino students (hat tip to Philippine Politics 04). Filipino-American blogger goodboi points out two eyewitness accounts of what happened at icantread01 and ntcoolfool and that media left comments on their blogs, requesting interviews. Also, another blogger was apparently the victim of a rumor that he was the killer, to the extent that,

apparently to him all the attention was all fun and games until he started getting angry phone calls and e-mails - death threats too. Michelle Malkin and the Drudge Report have written stuff about him.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

ACTUALLY, this entire week is a light one, as far as most people are concerned. Politicians are looking forward to this week as the last stretch of R&R they’re going to have until the elections in May. The same goes for media and the public.

I noticed unusually heavy traffic here in Metro Manila last Friday, so I assume the Holy Week holiday’s begun for many people: it’s a nice stretch of vacation time this year, since the President’s holiday economics (more thoroughly planned in recent years, because of complaints from businessmen) means the Holy Week vacation includes Bataan Day this year.

The whole holiday period of course has a religious purpose -the commemoration of Holy Week. Since not much else is going on, I thought I’d focus on some interesting things concerning Easter. This year marks one of the fairly rare occasions when the two oldest branches of Christianity, the Roman Catholic and the Easter Orthodox, will be celebrating Easter on the same date (all of Western Christianity, of course, follows the calendar and the liturgical year, followed by Catholics).

[Read the rest of this entry »]