Filipino cardinal is popular speaker, global traveler

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is a popular speaker who is comfortable in several languages, has traveled extensively and is known for his focus on evangelization and care for the poor and for immigrants.

While pundits now downplay the chances that the cardinal from the Philippines will become pope, he still is included in most lists of cardinals who can influence a conclave.

At 67, he is considered on the young side to become pope, but it was the upheaval in the general secretariat of Caritas Internationalis in 2022 that led many in the media to start doubting his chances of becoming pope.

Cardinal Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization under Pope Francis, was ending his second term as president of the international network of Catholic charities when Pope Francis suspended the secretary-general and other top officials, including the cardinal, after complaints about the workplace environment and bullying. As president, Cardinal Tagle did not have responsibility for the administration of the office, but the trouble there still impacted his reputation.

Still, soon after Pope Francis died April 21, people in the Philippines began speculating on Cardinal Tagle's chances and even starting prayer campaigns for his election.

In response, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines urged the Filipino faithful to refrain from openly advocating for him to be the next pope. "We leave it to the cardinal electors to decide who will succeed Pope Francis," said Father Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the bishops' public affairs commission, in a statement posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Manila April 24.

"It's not prudent for the public to promote Cardinal Tagle as the next Pope, as this could create the impression that the conclave might be swayed by external influences if Cardinal Tagle is elected as the next pontiff," Father Secillano said.

When the U.S. bishops held their National Eucharistic Congress in the summer of 2024, Pope Francis chose Cardinal Tagle as his representative to the gathering. At the closing Mass, the cardinal focused on how "a Eucharistic people is a missionary and evangelizing people," grateful for the gift of Jesus in the Eucharist and committed to sharing the Lord with others.

Already as a bishop and archbishop in the Philippines, he was drawing international attention and speaking at conferences throughout Asia and in the United States, where he had earned his doctorate in theology. And before becoming a cardinal, he was elected a member of the Synod of Bishops' assemblies in 2005, 2008 and 2012.

It was during the 2012 synod on the new evangelization that Pope Benedict XVI announced he would be one of six new cardinals. The November consistory where he received his red hat was the last before Pope Benedict resigned three months later.

A month later, after both the Philippine House and Senate passed versions of a Reproductive Health Bill that the nation's bishops opposed because it would fund contraceptives for the poor, Cardinal Tagle said the legislature's action was "unfortunate and tragic. But we do not take it as a defeat of truth -- for truth shall prevail, especially the truth about human life, marriage and the family."

In response, he said, the Manila Archdiocese would "work harder to promote the sanctity of human life and of the human person," including by educating youth in Catholicvalues, offering concrete assistance to the poor and working to preserve the true meaning of marriage.

Born June 21, 1957, in Manila, he studied at San Jose Seminary and Ateneo de Manila University, earning degrees in philosophy and theology. He earned his doctorate in theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington with a thesis on episcopal collegiality in the doctrine and practice of Pope Paul VI.

He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Imus Feb. 27, 1982, and served in various parishes and as spiritual director of the Imus seminary before becoming rector. He also taught philosophy and theology at the Divine Word Seminary and San Carlos Seminary.

In the mid-1990s, he was part of the editorial committee working on a history of the Second Vatican Council for the Institute for Religious Studies in Bologna, Italy. The history has been described in some quarters as being too progressive and as presenting Vatican II as a "rupture" with church tradition rather than a reform in continuity with tradition.

In 1997, St. John Paul II named him a member of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict.

St. John Paul named him bishop of Imus in 2001, an office he held for 10 years before becoming archbishop of Manila. Since 2008, he has appeared on a weekly television program, "The Word Exposed," in which he offers reflections on the Sunday Mass readings.