Papabili: Filipino Tagle, liked by the young

Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle (File Photo: Archdiocese of Manila – Office of Communications/Facebook)

By ANSA, Philippine News Agency

ROME – With a disarming smile and a great informality that is especially liked by young people, Filipino cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, one of the most well-known faces of the Asian Church, is a top papabile (pope tip) whose old video singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” – on a world without religions – has gone viral causing him some embarrassment.

“Chito,” the nickname by which he is called, especially by young people, was born in Manila 67 years ago and, on his mother’s side, he also has Chinese blood.

His father is of Tagalog ethnicity and his mother is Chinese-Filipino.

His paternal grandfather, from whom he inherited his surname, belonged to the class of Spanish origin, which constituted the local aristocracy until the Philippine revolution put an end to Spanish domination.

Beloved throughout his continent, Tagle was among the papabili already in 2013, also for that simple style with which he proposed the image of a new, fresh Church, different from the stiff one of the old continent, for example.

Since then, he was called to Rome by Pope Francis as head of Propaganda Fide, becoming the so-called “Red Pope,” precisely because of the power of this figure in the Church.

But over the years, his star has faded a bit: a stumble in his career occurred in 2022 when the Pontiff ousted him from the leadership of Caritas Internationalis.

Tagle had not been able to manage, or perhaps had not noticed, the increasingly polluted internal climate in which the charitable arm of the Church of the world operated. It was he who had to announce the Pope’s decision, assuring that it was not a question of “sexual harassment or abuse” or “bad management of money.” But the context had become too difficult to continue “walking together, with different cultures, in their unique expressions of humanity.”

Tagle continues to please people and young people, also for the simplicity with which he announces the Gospel, without giving up singing and dancing.

The old video of his, circulating in recent days, in which he sings Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which a world without nations or religions is evoked, has caused some controversy.

The Filipino cardinal is perhaps the most social media-inclined among the cardinals.

On X from April 21 to 23, he collected about 149,000 mentions and has a verified Facebook page followed by more than 600,000 followers. Since he was Archbishop of Manila, he has also managed his own YouTube page in which he explains the Gospel with simple words and always with a smile.