Friday, May 30, 2008

New Filipino Nuncio


Papal Nuncio Archbishop-elect Barney Auza, Dr. Lucie Noel Gamboa, Dr. Ed Gamboa, inside the Vatican, at site of First Christian Martyrs.
Papal Nuncio. Papal Nuncio Archbishop-elect Barney Auza, Dr. Lucie Noel Gamboa, Dr. Ed Gamboa, inside the Vatican, at site of First Christian Martyrs.

Whether it's Ramiele Malubay showing Ryan, Paula, Simon, and Randy how a Filipina can sing on American Idol, or Arnel Pineda belting a song as the new lead vocalist of Journey, we celebrate -- and with justifiable pride and joy -- every time a Filipino or Filipina hits the international scene. Our nation of 90 million rarely gets the recognition it deserves. Shifted from center on the world stage, we are grateful for any spotlight out there.

Well, this month we really hit it big!

On May 8, 2008, the Vatican announced to the whole world that the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, had appointed Reverend Monsignor Bernardito C. Auza, of the diocese of Talibon, Bohol, as Titular Archbishop of Suacia and Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti. Holding the rank of ambassador, the Nuncio is the diplomatic representative of the Holy See in countries with diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The Apostolic Nuncio has the double mandate of representing the Holy Father to the State to which he is accredited, and to the Catholic Church in that country.

Only the fourth Filipino nuncio in our history, Msgr. Barney, as he is fondly called, had, only two years ago, been appointed First Counsellor of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York. The appointment was good news to Msgr. Barney's many friends and family (some of whom reside in San Diego), but it was hardly a surprise. Msgr. Barney, who speaks fluent Italian, French, Spanish, in addition to English, Tagalog and his native Bisaya, is an intellectual powerhouse. In addition to his diplomatic experience, Msgr. Barney is also, in the words of Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines secretary general Msgr. Juanito Figura, "friendly and approachable". His rise in the Catholic Church hierarchy is well-deserved.

Born in Balintawak, Talibon, Bohol, on June 10, 1959, 48-year-old Msgr. Barney is the eight of twelve children of parents Meliton Garcia Auza and Magdalena Polestico Cleopas. After preliminary education in Talibon, he entered the Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary in Tagbilaran City. He then enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, where he obtained his Licentiate in Philosophy in 1981, Licentiate in Theology in 1986 and Masters in Education also in 1986. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1985, in California.

Msgr. Barney was sent to the University of St. Thomas (Angelicum) in Rome, where he obtained a Licentiate in Canon Law in 1989 and a Doctorate in Sacred Theology in 1990, and to the Vatican Diplomatic School (Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica), where he finished his diplomatic and linguistic studies in that same year.

Thereafter, he served as secretary to the apostolic Nunciature in Madagascar and Mauritius (1990-1993) and in Bulgaria (1993-1996). He was appointed counsellor in Albania in 1997 and then served as charge d' affaires of the Apostolic Nunciature in London. From 1999 to 2006, Msgr. Barney worked as counsellor at the Section for Relations with States (the “Foreign Ministry” of the Holy See) of the Secretariat State, in the Vatican. He worked at the Holy See Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York from the summer of 2006 until his appointment as Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti. The highlight of his New York experience was the recent visit of the His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the United Nations and New York on April 18-20, 2008.

Msgr. Barney Auza is the fourth nuncio from the Philippines. The first Filipino nuncio is Archbishop Osvaldo Padilla of Cebu City who was named by the late Pope John Paul II (the Great) as nuncio to Panama in December 17,1990. Archbishop Padilla currently serves as apostolic nuncio to Korea and Mongolia.

The second nuncio is Archbishop Adolfo Yllana of Naga City, appointed December 13, 2001, and currently nuncio to Pakistan. The third is Archbishop Francisco Padilla, younger brother of the first nuncio, appointed Titular Archbishop of Nebbio on April 1, 2006, and presently the nuncio to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Msgr. Barney Auza's ordination as Archbishop is scheduled to be held at St. Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican, on July 3, 2008 at 5 pm. The ordination will be conferred by His Eminence the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, with as co-consecrators His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops. It will be an event many will cherish.

Lucie and I first met Msgr. Barney in Rome in the summer of 1990 when Fr. Roque "Khing" Vano introduced us. He was then a young priest, who had just finished his degree in Canon Law and was embarking on a diplomatic career.

Msgr. Barney showed us the City of Rome and the Vatican that tourists rarely see, such as the site of the First Martyrs. Through the years, he has made it possible for us to obtain Papal audiences and special events at the Vatican, such as the beatification of Pedro Calungsud. Through his rise in the Church, Msgr. Barney has remained as friendly and approachable as his peers have attested.

On one occasion, when my sister Susan had trouble getting transportation to the Leonardo da Vinci - Fiumicino airport in Rome, Msgr. Barney was there first thing in the morning to personally drive her so she would not miss her flight.

It is a joy to see a great Filipino priest ascend the steps to higher office, where he surely will influence for the good the lives of many.

Congratulations to Archbishop Barney Auza !!!

Friday, May 23, 2008

Pan de Sal Cruise

At 24 knots, the 91,000-ton Celebrity Constellation, with 2,400 plus passengers and 941 crew members on board, cruised the Baltic Sea towards St. Petersburg. Thanks to Flor Rodriguez and her staff at Travel Best in National City, who so ably organized the 14-day Scandinavian trip, forty-seven Filipino-Americans from San Diego went the way of 11th century seafaring Vikings.



In two weeks, these lucky San Diegans traveled 3,294 nautical miles, docking at historic ports for a day or two. They visited Oslo, Copenhagen, Warnemunde, Tallin, St. Petersburg, Helsinki and Stockholm, while succumbing to the allure of a wide open sea.



It was a memorable trip for various reasons, one of which was sitting down for dinner each evening at the elegant San Marco restaurant on Deck 4 to select from a first rate menu. The unique culinary experience was particularly special because of the basket of hot pan de sal which the Filipino kitchen crew baked daily for its beloved Filipino patrons.



Pan de sal was served at specific tables occupied by Filipino guests. Soon, other passengers learned of the distinctive bread. Crew members of other nationalities -- from Bulgaria, Honduras, Jamaica,etc. --- also acquired a taste of the mildly sweet Filipino bread.



The generous kitchen crew made homemade pan de sal which was tastier than commercially baked bread, if a bit sweeter. Appreciative of the special treat, we requested a copy of the "secret" pan de sal recipe and the hospitable crew obliged.



The Celebrity Constellation's (exclusive) delicious pan de sal was made out of:



10 lbs flour

16 oz sugar

3 oz salt

3 lbs butter

5 lbs bread crumbs

5 lbs milk

5 lbs eggs

15 oz yeast



Filipinos, undoubtedly, are making their significant contribution to the rapidly rising industry of cruise vacations (in the last decade, cruise lines have doubled their fleets and the business is expected to triple by 2009). Of the 900 plus crew members, 300 or a third, were Filipinos. Our kababayans ran the kitchen (the chief pastry chef was Filipino); they attended to diners as waiters and maitre' d; they populated the guest relations counter, patiently taking care of complaints and dutifully exchanging foreign currency; they assisted at the gangway, assisting passengers on and off the ship; they maintained the engine room and handled the ventilation system, plumbing, desalinization, etc. -- they were literally everywhere, from bow to stern, on all eleven decks.



For a company that is headquartered in Miami and employing an international crew recruited from 60 countries worldwide ((the master captain was Greek), the extent of Filipino involvement is phenomenal. One obvious reason is that Filipinos, in addition to fluency in English, provide friendly customer service. They work hard, are uncomplaining, and resilient. Recruitment agencies in the Philippines facilitate the steady supply of Filipino workers for cruise line companies.



Life at sea, despite free board and lodging and other perks, can be difficult, particularly with regards to strained family relationships. Contracts vary from 3-9 months. Filipinos usually sign up for 6-month contracts.



Base pay is a lowly $50/month for the average stateroom steward, cabin attendant or housekeeper. They rely on gratuities from passengers but are guaranteed $900/month, particularly during dry dock days when the ship is empty.



Still, it is job that entails sacrifice. Cruises go back to back so the crew hardly enjoys days or holidays off. However, the stewards admit that work on a cruise ship is preferable to scrounging for irregular jobs back home in the Philippines. Furthermore, they consider their working conditions to be better than those of overseas workers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East.



I wish the 14-day cruise could have been extended. It was a wonderful vacation and an eye-opening experience for both Filipino passengers and their kababayan crew members.

Friday, May 9, 2008

TAKE COURAGE !

Pope Benedict XVI spoke on a wide range of subjects during his recent visit to the U. S. The Holy Father discussed the responsibility of developed countries vis-a-vis the third world. He enjoined us to welcome poor immigrants to our shores. He apologized to the victims of the scandal which has shaken the Catholic church in America.

The successor of St. Peter came across - to Catholics and non-Catholics alike - as kind, honest, sincere, and erudite. It was impressive that he wrote the

speeches himself. Given his many years of academic experience, that should not have been too much of a surprise.

In Yonkers, New York, Pope Benedict delivered a special message to 26,000 young men and women gathered at St Joseph's Seminary and College. It was a message which may well apply to all of us, young and old alike, and senior citizens too!

Pointing to the lives of six saints, the Holy Father remarked that we too can
certainly aspire to, if not achieve, that kind of life and attain to that level
of holiness.

He noted that "Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Saint
John Neumann, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Venerable Pierre Toussaint, and Padre Felix Varela (are) ...six ordinary men and women who grew up to lead extraordinary lives.....each responded to the Lord's call to a life of charity and each served Him here, in the alleys, streets and suburbs of New York.....what a remarkably diverse grouo they are: poor and rich, lay men and women - one a wealthy wife and mother - priests and sisters, immigrants from afar, the daughter of a Mohawk warrior father and Algonquin mother, another a Haitian slave, and a Cuban intellectual. ......

Any one of us could be among them, for there is no stereotype to this group, no single mold. Yet a closer look reveals that there are common elements. Inflamed with the love of Jesus, their lives became remarkable journeys of hope. .....

For each there was an act of abandonment to God, in the confidence that He is the final destination of every pilgrim.....

Through orphanages, schools and hospitals, by befriending the poor, the sick and the marginalized, and through the compelling witness that comes from walking humbly in the footsteps of Jesus, these six people laid open the way of faith, hope and charity to countless individuals....."

Sainthood for us, frail ordinary mortals? Was Pope Benedict kidding? Was the Holy Father just trying to be nice and to make us feel better about ourselves?

Apparently not. The Pope was reiterating a message that dates back to Apostolic times. A message that has faded through the centuries so that Vatican II and Pope John Paul the Great, dusting it off, have put it back on center stage.

The call to holiness is God's invitation to each and everyone of us. It is not
an exclusuve invitation that is reserved only to bishops and priests, to nuns
and monks and deacons.

Admittedly, it is no cakewalk. The ascent to Mt Carmel, as the great theologian and mystic, St John of the Cross calls the spiritual journey to which all of us are encouraged to take is the hardest trip to embark on.

However, Pope Benedict, echoing the spirit of Vatican II, says that it comes
down to one simple task and one thing only:: Follow Christ!

Training to become a saint does not necessarily mean traveling to India
and working in the slums of Calcutta, as Mother Teresa did. Nor does it strictly obligate you to offer your life in exchange for one condemned to execution, as St Maximilian Kolbe did.

Each of us are invited to seek our own unique pathway back home to our heavenly Father and Creator. Spiritual writers point to the life of St Therese, "the little flower" as a model of this challenging quest.

As Therese studied the lives of the saints, she wondered how she could ever
duplicate their heroic achievements. She was "a small speck of sand" compared to the lofty mountains that martyrs and selfless missionaries appeared to be.

Since she was too small and to weak to make the arduous climb, Therese asked God to carry her. The "little way of spirituality" which St Therese describes in her autobiography, "The Story of a Soul" not only made "the ordinary Carmelite nun" one of the Doctors of the Church, but also one of the greatest saints in modern times.

Therefore, it is understandable for Pope Benedict XVI to say to the youth gathered in New York:: " Take courage! Fix your gaze on the saints.....Let your imaginations soar freely along the limitless expanse of the horizons of Christian discipleship".

Friday, May 2, 2008

Rethinking Iraq

As San Diegans, with families and friends inextricably linked to the military, we may prefer not to ponder much about the situation in Iraq beyond “staying the course”, wishing for President George W. Bush to finally declare: “mission accomplished”.

Yet, after 4,000 plus deaths and more than a hundred thousand casualties since the war began March 19, 2003 – not to mention the estimated 1.2 million Iraqis killed, including innocent women and children (a study published in Lancet, the well respected British medical journal, documented 600,000 Iraqi deaths as of July 2006) – isn't it time for each one of us to rethink the situation there?

The 5-year war (the second longest war in American history) may be waged by the armed services under orders of Washington, yet it is, despite the much publicized international coalition, solely (at least, primarily) an American war. We, as citizens of the United States, are flat out responsible for the war – and its long-ranging consequences.

There is much talk about the soaring prices of gasoline. Isn't it ironic that the raison d'etre for the war was to secure our national interest in the Middle East (termed Pax Americana in foreign policy parlance) and that a major cause for interest in the Middle East is oil, $5 trillion worth of this hydrocarbon commodity? Yet, the war has weakened the US dollar and driven the American economy into a recession. It is not hard to figure the math. In September 2002, the former White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey estimated the war to cost around $200 billion, or 2% of the GNP. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office pegged the cost of waging war at $6-9 billion a month and of maintaining an occupying military presence at $1-4 billion a month.

The combined Iraq Afghanistan wars are now estimated to cost $600-$800 billion (ten times more than was originally estimated by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) and is projected soon to reach a trillion dollar. Adding post war reconstruction, continuing foreign aid, long term medical care of the wounded and disabled, etc., the cost is projected to triple, as claimed in the book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, written by Nobel Prize winner (economics) Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.

The original argument of course was that we could not afford to sit idly by while Saddam worked overtime to gather weapons of mass destruction and that dirty bombs from the splintered USSR were filtering into the back alleys of Islamic Jihadists. In the bitter aftermath of 911, who would risk the possibility of seeing our major cities blown to pieces? Who could comprehend the horrors of Disneyworld or a Superbowl stadium blasted to smithereens? Or millions of people dropping dead from drinking contaminated water? Then Secretary of State Colin Powell did make a compelling argument before the United Nations, pointing out that Iraq was capable of manufacturing not only chemical but insidious biological weapons.

Framed in the context of righting human rights abuses -- the noble and moral imperative of eliminating three decades of sadistic rule and mass graves -- then bolstered by the fear of a Middle East madman stockpiling an Armageddon arsenal of weapons while harboring Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda, people rallied behind the American flag to confront the modern axis of evil forces. At the time, there were very few, if any dissenting voices. Having experienced first hand the abuses of a dictatorial regime under Marcos, Filipinos in particular felt the plight of oppressed Iraqis and the necessity of unleashing liberation forces from the democratic superpower house that was America.

One significant objection came from Pope John Paul II. But the Pontiff’s ailing voice was drowned in the frenzy to stop a potential nuclear holocaust.

It was difficult to understand why John Paul (the Great) was against the liberation of oppressed people. After all, the Holy Father lived under Communist oppression in Poland before assuming the chair of Peter.

Yet, didn't Pope John Paul's concerns about the war in Iraq turn out to be prophetic? No weapons of mass destruction were found. The US military combed every square inch and turned over every rock but found nothing, except a disheveled and emasculated dictator. Indeed, we effectively eliminated a strongman and his ilk, but is Iraq better off now? Moreover, are we, as a nation, better off? Is the international community better off?

Not to objective observers. Not to someone who was born and raised in Iraq and now practices in the U.S. as a physician. After morning rounds in the hospital, I often talk to him about the situation in Iraq -- what is publicized and what is not. Indeed, he thinks it was justified for American and allied forces to liberate his native country. But since we have metamorphosed from an invading to an occupying force, Iraq has groaned from one disaster to another.

Pope Benedict XVI did not specify Iraq nor did he denounce the United States when he addressed the United Nations on April 18th, on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, his message to the US and the world was clear and unequivocal. Brief excerpts of the Holy Father's message are worth pondering.

“As Pope John Paul II expressed it in 1995, the Organization (United Nations) should be “a moral centre where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a ‘family of nations’...

This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.

Indeed, questions of security, development goals, reduction of local and global inequalities, protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate, require all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law, and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet...

What is needed is a deeper search for ways of pre-emptying and managing conflicts by exploring every possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or desire for reconciliation...

When faced with new and insistent challenges, it is a mistake to fall back on a pragmatic approach, limited to determining “common ground”, minimal in content and weak in its effect.

The promotion of human rights remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities between countries and social groups, and for increasing security. Indeed, the victims of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence, and they can then become violators of peace.....

Today...efforts need to be redoubled in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration (of Human Rights) and to compromise its inner unity so as to facilitate a move away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests...

Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal...

My presence at this Assembly is a sign of esteem for the United Nations, and it is intended to express the hope that the Organization will increasingly serve as a sign of unity between States and an instrument of service to the entire human family.

Peace and Prosperity with God’s help!”

Indeed, it is time to rethink the war in Iraq.