‘Radical poverty’ challenge given at WACOM4

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo (Photo: Roy Lagarde)

MARILAO, Bulacan, Jan. 19, 2017 – A seminarian shares what for him is his greatest learning so far from the 4th World Apostolic Congress on Mercy (WACOM4): the challenge to live radical poverty.

“Well, for me, I’m at the Theologate, the challenge for me is how to live also in poverty, with the poor. Because you can’t talk about the experience of mercy, the experience of justice until you don’t have it yourself,” said Harvey Bagos, seminarian of the Diocese of Novaliches, in Filipino.

He said the testimonial of Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo on Jan. 17 at the UST Quadricentennial Pavilion on an attitude towards poverty that goes deeper than the “let’s fix poverty” stance is “very challenging” to him as a seminarian undergoing priestly formation.

“This poverty bishop was talking about is a different poverty. This is a ‘poverty that I’ve experienced’, that I’ve personally lived out,” said the 4th year Theology student of St. Vincent School of Theology of Tandang Sora, Quezon City.

He said the prelate’s sharing was specially moving because it went beyond the intellectual level and into the personal.

“Because his experience of mercy was not just something he studied, not just discussed in conferences like this,” explained Bagos.

“The mercy Bishop Pabillo was talking about is experience of [the] real mercy of God in the people, there with the poor.”

Bagos, who was able to attend the second day of the international event because of another seminarian friend from the Diocese of Kalookan, said Pabillo’s testimony was striking because of the prelate’s simplicity and the sharing about his hunger strikes for social issues.

Some 5,000 delegates from all over the world are in the Philippines for the ongoing WACOM4, which ends on Jan. 20. (Minnie Agdeppa / CBCPNews)