The five-day visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines, which ended on Monday, was remarkable testimony both to the strength of Catholicism in this heartland of the faith in Asia and to this pope's particular appeal to the poor. Between six and seven million of the 80 million Catholic Filipinos turned out in Manila in the teeming rain on Sunday, many waiting patiently for up to nine hours to hear or just glimpse the 78-year-old pontiff .
Earlier in the visit he had brought comfort to the people of Tacloban, the city hardest-hit by the November 2013 super-typhoon Haiyan which killed at least 6,300 people and damaged more than a million homes in in the central Philippines.
The pope’s message was one of compassion for the poor and a blistering attack on the corruption that blights their lives. It was not going to be easy. “Reforming the social structures which perpetuate poverty and the exclusion of the poor first requires a conversion of mind and heart,” he said in his first public address, and urged the people “to reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor, and to make concerted efforts to ensure the inclusion of every man and woman and child in the community.”
A quarter of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day, 24 million people. Although there have been signs of growth in the Philippines economy – averaging more than 5 per cent a year since 2012 – few of its poorest have seen any improvement in living standards.
And, speaking in the presence of President Benigno Aquino, elected in 2010 on a pledge to fight corruption, Pope Francis urged the government to press on with the challenge – both Acquino’s two predecessors, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Joseph Estrada have been indicted on corruption or electoral fraud charges.
The pope, more disappointingly, and very much in the vein of his predecessors, also hit out strongly at the government’s population control efforts, saying the family was under threat from “insidious attacks and programmes contrary to all that we hold true and sacred”.