ASIA’S front-runner for the papacy, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (pic) of the Philippines is a charismatic moderate often dubbed the “Asian Francis”.
Tagle, 67, who shares with Pope Francis a history of advocating for the poor, migrants and other marginalised people, is known for his missionary spirit and pastoral focus.
Wearing glasses with a youthful air and ready smile, the cardinal nicknamed “Chito” is a popular figure among the country’s more than 90 million Catholics.
Born into a working-class family near Manila, Tagle was ordained as a priest in 1982 and became archbishop of the capital in 2011, a politically influential post in one of the largest dioceses in Asia.
He was made cardinal by former pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
A fluent English speaker, Tagle has been mentioned as a possible papal contender since the last conclave in 2013, when Francis was elected, and his name is on everybody’s lips this time around.
Underscoring the close ties between the late Argentine pontiff and Asia’s most prominent bishop, Tagle was appointed in 2019 head of a key Vatican department, the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.
After Francis reformed the department, he named Tagle “pro-prefect” in 2022, leading the section for “First Evangelisation and New Particular Churches”, with responsibility over new dioceses.
At a 2019 Vatican summit on fighting child sex abuse, he pointed the finger at the Church’s top ranks. However, he has been accused of failing to tackle the issue sufficiently in the Philippines.
Questions have also been raised over what he knew about the employment in the Central African Republic of a Belgian priest, Luk Delft, by the Vatican’s Caritas Internationalis charity.
Delft had previously been convicted of child sexual abuse and banned from contact with children for 10 years.
Tagle served as president of Caritas Internationalis, the world’s second-largest charitable association, from 2015 until 2022.
In 2022, Tagle and the rest of the leadership team were removed by Francis after a Vatican-led audit found “deficiencies” in management and procedures.
In June 2023, the pope appointed Tagle as his special envoy to the National Eucharistic Congress of the Democratic Republic of Congo. — AFP
