Philippines' new cardinal underlines need for Church to help the poor

Feb.26,2014: The Catholic church must fundamentally reorient itself to place its institutions and financial resources at the service of the world's poor, said the newly elected Cardinal of the Philippines. "The origin of the church is poverty," said Cardinal Orlando Quevedo. "And the journey of Jesus Christ was the journey with poor people." "Today, the church has riches, institutions," the prelate continued. "But I would like to think that the only way the church can redeem these resources, as well as its institutions, would be to place them at the service of justice and of the poor for the sake of the kingdom of God”, he added. Cardinal Quevedo, who heads the Philippines' Cotabato archdiocese, was made a cardinal along with 18 other prelates in a ceremony Pope Francis led on Saturday. The Cardinal hosted an hour long press briefing earlier on Friday at the Pontifical Filipino College in Rome. He spoke of an Asian vision of church built on basic ecclesial communities. Asia's vision of church is relevant to the vision of Pope Francis, "who is looking at the periphery rather than at the center," he said.
Cardinal Quevedo comes from Cotabato archdiocese, located in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Noting that more than 50 percent of the people in his archdiocese live below the poverty line, Cardinal Quevedo said the idea of the church becoming "a church for the poor" is "not extraneous to the beginning and the core of what the church should be."