In this second part of the exclusive interview that Cardinal Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David gave to America on Dec. 12, 2024, the Filipino cardinal speaks about his being given the red cardinal’s hat, shares his view on the Synod on Synodality, which he attended in 2023 and 2024, and rejects the suggestion that synodality can be rolled back by Pope Francis’ successor. Having studied in Jerusalem, he also speaks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[Read Part I of the interview here.]
The red hat
On Oct. 6, 2024, Pope Francis announced that he would hold a consistory that December to create 21 new cardinals, including the Filipino bishop, Pablo Virgilio David.
Like the others named on the pope’s list, Bishop David had received no advance notice of his elevation. He told me he only learned about it “when someone sent me a text message congratulating me. And I responded, ‘You must be joking.’ But he said, ‘No,’ and then sent me a video clip of the Angelus where the pope made the announcement naming the new cardinals and, sure enough, I heard my name.” Describing his response, the cardinal said: “I thought I was going to hyperventilate. Then a deluge of text messages started arriving. So since my coping mechanism is always prayer, I did some breathing exercises and went to the chapel. And I said [to the Lord], ‘What’s going on here?’ Then soon after, I said: ‘All right, so this is a new chapter of my life. Let it be.’”
He told me, “I was wondering why [he made me a cardinal] because I never really got that close to Pope Francis. But I think maybe it was because of my involvement in the synod.” The cardinal had been elected by the Philippine bishops as a delegate to the synod and, as such, participated in the synod’s continental assembly for Asia as well. During the Roman synod meetings, Cardinal Ambo, as he is commonly known, was elected to the synod’s communications committee and, in the second session, to the post-synodal council.
The Synod on Synodality
When I asked for his reflections on this event, he said, “To tell you honestly, Francis inspires me, and, for me, synodality has always been [the] platform of [his] papacy, from the moment he was elected pope, even from the moment he delivered his message to his brother cardinals,” Cardinal David said, referring to then-Cardinal Bergoglio’s pre-conclave speech that many identify as instrumental in his election. “That was my first amazement about Bergoglio, that brief speech about the church being self-referential, about Christ knocking at the door to get out,” the cardinal said.
Reflecting back, he felt that Cardinal Bergoglio’s speech also seemed to allude to the year of faith that was declared by Pope Benedict from October 2012 to November 2013, and that was ongoing during the 2013 conclave. “If you remember, Benedict published an apostolic letter [“Porta Fidei,” 2011] that began with the line ‘The door of faith is always open,’” the cardinal recalled. “It’s like Francis is saying: ‘What do you mean the door of faith is always open? It is being closed everywhere. People are not that eager about the Christian faith anymore. Why? Because of our self-referencing.’ That’s my reading,” the cardinal said. He said that he read Bergoglio’s speech in light of Benedict’s letter “because Benedict used that idea of the door of faith and the idea of Christ entering, and Francis reversed it and talked about Christ wanting to get out of the church in which we imprison him, so that he could go to the peripheries.”
The cardinal added, “I think the synod is Francis’ way of concretizing his challenge to get [us] out of self-referentiality in the church, that we don’t just stick to our churchy language and deal only with fellow Catholics, and [that we] learn that God intends the salvation of the whole world, not only of Catholics—that we’re not Catholic if we believe that God wants to save only Catholics.”
“What is most Catholic is really the capacity to be synodal, to walk not just with fellow Catholics, not just with fellow Christians, not just with fellow believers, but with every fellow human being on earth,” Cardinal David said. “That’s what Pope Francis is contributing. He has really widened our perspectives, and that excites me.”
He added: “I was raised by the Jesuits, and I could sense the Jesuit in Francis, in many of his speeches, especially when he speaks about discernment, about the work of the devil, about spiritual warfare and things like this. I’m familiar with this language.”
When I asked the cardinal what he took away from the synod, he said that it was the challenge from Pope Francis to build “a church that is accountable, a church that is transparent, a church that is open to evaluation, a church that is humbler and more inclusive, a church that is welcoming, a church that does not declare that the Eucharist is an exclusive meal for the righteous and the deserving.”
He added that Francis J. Maloney, S.D.B.’s book A Body Broken for a Broken People: Eucharist in the New Testament convinced him “that the first morsel of bread at the Eucharist was for Judas Iscariot, that Jesus was turning a meal of betrayal into a meal of forgiveness, and that the Eucharist is a meal that is offered so that sins might be forgiven. So, it is not for the righteous and the deserving, it’s for sinners like you and me.”
Cardinal David said that during the synod he asked a question that “made a lot of people react.” It related to the dual role of the pope as both a religious and political leader, in the context of a specific part of the working document that dealt with papal primacy. “I raised my hand, and since Pope Francis was there, I said, ‘Holy Father, I’m saying this with all due respect. You are aware that you are playing a dual role as a church leader and a political leader. As head of state, you are considered as a state leader, a political leader, and you are also the symbol of the universal church.’”
“I said, ‘I wonder if there’s ever been an occasion to evaluate the wisdom of this dual personality of the Supreme Pontiff because it can work to the disadvantage of the church as well. For instance, in China, any intervention that you would initiate with regard to the church in China would be considered as an intrusion into their sovereign affairs because you are a political leader at the same time.’” He commended the renewal of the Vatican’s provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops and said the presence of two delegates from China at the synod “is a welcome development,” a comment that prompted applause in the synod hall.
Afterward, he said, some bishops asked him why he brought up the question regarding the papacy. He explained that he did so “because I always felt that it’s something that we must seriously think about because in our countries the nuncios are treated like ambassadors, political ambassadors. And when the pope visits a country, he is treated as a head of state, just as happened when he went to Belgium, even though it’s obvious that he’s coming more as a church leader.”
Since many Catholics wonder if the synodal process will live on after Francis, or if it will be rolled back, I asked the cardinal what he thinks. He flatly rejected any suggestion of backsliding. He said that synodality is “beyond Francis, because the synod is Vatican II. Francis merely took Vatican II seriously. Synodality is not really just Francis; it’s the Latin American church.”
He added, “I’ve read Aparecida,” referring to the influential final document of the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, “and I am in close touch with Latin American bishops, and I’m happy that the influence of the theology of the Global South, especially the practical ecclesiology of the Global South, is really making a difference in the universal church. I don’t think this can be ever reversed. That gives me hope for the church. It’s the Vatican II renewal of the church that is sort of being given its completion.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Since Cardinal David studied at the Ecolé Biblique in Jerusalem for a year during the first Intifada (1987-1993), I asked what he thinks about what is happening in the Holy Land today. (This interview was conducted before the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was finalized on Jan. 15.) He responded by telling me that the Israeli ambassador to the Philippines had asked a similar question some months ago at a dinner he hosted at his residence in Manila to which he had invited the papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown, Cardinal Jose Advincula, the archbishop of Manila, and then-Bishop David as president of the bishops’ conference.
He recalled that the ambassador asked them something like, “How are you feeling about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, especially in Gaza?” He said he read the question as a probe in a diplomatic way and responded,
Ambassador, you’ve worked in the Philippines, and you probably are beginning to know us, to get to know the Filipino character, and I must tell you that Filipinos in general, will always side with the underdogs. And I asked, “Who do you think is the underdog in this conflict?” He didn’t answer me. He just kept quiet. It’s like he was taken aback. I didn’t say the Palestinians were the underdog, but it was obvious from the way I posed my question.
Looking to the future
Although Pope Francis is in good health now and there is no conclave on the near horizon, when the time comes, Cardinal David will have the right to vote in the conclave to choose his successor. I asked what he would be looking for then. He replied without hesitation:
Someone who will implement the final document of the Synod on Synodality and take the renewal of the church in the Second Vatican Council really seriously. Someone who can sustain the challenge that Pope Francis has made about a church that is more inclusive, a church that goes out to the peripheries, a church that is like a field hospital for the wounded. All of these things inspire me personally, and I think, I’m hopeful, that the majority of the cardinals are quite attuned to this, too.
Hours after we finished our conversation, Cardinal David took a flight back to the Philippines. He plans to return to Rome during the Jubilee Year to take possession of the titular church that Pope Francis has assigned to him, as he does to every new cardinal, in the Diocese of Rome. His is the church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the western suburbs of the Eternal City, which was opened in 1936.
[Interview: Why Cardinal ‘Ambo’ David received ‘a lot of death threats’ in Duterte’s Philippines]
