'Popemania' hits the Philippines ahead of papal trip

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis arrives in the Philippines Thursday on the second leg of his apostolic journey in Asia.  The Pope left Sri Lanka early Thursday and is due to arrive in Manila at around 10.45 a.m. Rome time.

Sean Patrick Lovett is in Manila awaiting the Pope’s arrival. He said the Philippines’ capital is buzzing with excitement.

Listen to the report by Seàn-Patrick Lovett: 

“Popemania sweeps the Philippines” – no, it’s not my headline, it’s the front-page header, in Manila’s leading daily newspaper, The Philippine Star. And that says it all.

Anticipation for the Pope’s arrival here is at such fever pitch that newspapers, TV shows and just about everyone you meet, don’t really seem interested in discussing anything else. In Manila, where the Pope will be spending three days out of his four-day pilgrimage, the inevitable question is: “Where are you going to see him?”. That’s because Filipinos are tactile, experiential, and wonderfully expressive people who believe it would be simply discourteous not to greet their guest in person. And they have every intention of doing so.

Which is why the only other topic of conversation is – security.

This is not just the kind of security we associate with regular terrorist alerts and a massive police presence either. It’s true the Armed Forces are deploying 17,000 troops while 25,000 policemen are already making their presence felt as the whole law enforcement machine kicks into gear. Concrete “crowd control” barriers topped with wire-mesh gratings have been set up along the routes to be taken by the papal motorcade and the Presidential Palace has sent out several appeals for the public’s cooperation to prevent stampedes during the large gatherings involving the Pope.

Here in the Philippines, the term “large gathering” usually implies numbers of above one million people. And, rather than “stampede”, they have coined the euphemism “crowd surge” to warn against what authorities fear could turn out to be the greatest threat to the Pope’s security: an excess of popular affection and enthusiasm.  

But there’s something else in the air that’s causing concern: an atmospheric threat called “Storm Amang”. Weather forecasters describe it as a low-pressure area intensifying into a tropical depression that could bring heavy rains and gusty winds to precisely the locations to be visited by Pope Francis later this week. Local Church leaders are calling on the faithful to pray a well-known invocation for delivery from calamities, something with which Filipinos are, unfortunately, only too familiar.

On a brighter note, the President of the Philippine Bishops Conference, has asked that every church bell in the country should ring out in welcome on Thursday at 10:45 p.m. when the Pope’s plane touches down at Villamore Air Base in Manila. Since there are some 600,000 churches and about 2 million chapel (many with bells), that should make quite a lot of joyful noise.