Assets of Filipinos are faith, family and community spirit

Assets of Filipinos are faith, family and community spirit

(Vatican Radio) Record numbers of Filipinos are expected to turn out on Sunday for a final outdoor Mass in Manila marking the concluding day of Pope Francis’ pastoral visit to Asia. Ahead of the Mass, the Pope is also due to meet with young people and with leaders of other faiths gathered at the University of Santo Tomas.  

Among those who’ve been following closely the events of this three day visit to the Philippines is Oscar Solis, Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, California and the first Filipino bishop to be ordained in the United States. He talked to the head of Vatican Radio’s English Section, Sean-Patrick Lovett, who’s in Manila covering this papal trip, about the huge diaspora of Filipinos living and working in other countries around the world.

Bishop Solis says latest surveys show that three million Filipinos are living in the United States, with the largest community in the state of California. In Los Angeles alone there are between three and four hundred thousand, the majority of whom are Catholic, since 80% of people in the Philippines belong to the Catholic Church.

Many of the immigrants, he says, work in the medical profession, but they do a wide variety of jobs and are an important source of revenue for the Filipino government since foreign workers generate around six billion dollars in remittances that they send home from abroad.

Bishop Solis says Filipinos are the “modern missionaries of our Church”. They were gifted by the faith of their colonisers, the Spanish, he says, but now they bring that faith wherever they go. The cultural traits of his countrymen and women, Bishop Solis, says, are their focus on the family, their religiosity, their hard work and their community spirit – these are the assets they contribute to both society and to the Church.

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