On May 1st, the 2nd Sunday of Easter, Pope Benedict XVI presides at the Beatification of his predecessor, Karol Józef Wojtyła, also known as John Paul II since his October 1978 election to the papacy.

I was a young priest in the year 1978 when over the radio I heard the election of the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI who died in 1523. I thought that it was a miracle to have a Pope from the area in Eastern Europe that was previously known as behind the ‘Iron Curtain’.

I had my studies in Rome and I had quite a number of Polish schoolmates and friends. My close associations with Poles made me look at the ‘miracle’ with a guarded welcome. The Polish students at the Gregorian University were noted for being ultra conservatives and anti anything that was of ‘red’ or even slightly red color. To make me really fearful, the man was a graduate of the next-door university, the Angelicum – the ‘bastion’ of Thomism in Rome.

Yet, Pope John Paul II also attracted me immensely to the chagrin of my many confreres. Personally, I found the man’s powerful attraction irresistible! He was like a magnet that drew people to him notwithstanding your disagreement with the man and his views.

I was in Rome for three periods of my life and the two periods belonged to the Pontificate of John Paul II. I was drawn to the services he publicly celebrated, particularly Christmas and Holy Week celebrations including the Station of the Cross at the Coliseum. The celebrations were like ‘magic’ and people remained glued to the magnet to the end of the ceremonies. This alone was a miracle, at least, for me that looked at long rituals in Rome with Federico Fellini’s eyes for the ‘hilarious’ the ‘irony’ and the ‘comedy’.

I was on my way home from classes riding in an overcrowded autobus no. 64 towards the Vatican when the news that Pope John Paul II was shot at St. Peter’s Square on the 13th May 1981 (the feast of Our lady of Fatima). The crowd was all over the streets and the sirens were howling no end as the pope was rushed to the hospital.

The people were stunned and speechless and the traffic stopped! I got out and walked towards St. Peter's Square where a good crowd was praying for the safety of the Pope. Then the crowd moved to the Gemelli Hospital where they stood in prayers and vigil while the doctors operated on the Pope. This was his second miracle. I had witnessed it and I believed!

There were many things that I had disagreed passionately with Pope John Paul II. But there were also many things that endeared him to me in a very special way.

The first was his contagious passion for inter-religious dialogue putting emphasis on prayers. In 1986, he invited all religious leaders to come to Assisi and pray for peace and harmony among the followers and leaders of world’s religions. I thought then that this initiative was either ‘Quixotic’ or ‘earthshaking’ since the call to dialogue and prayer was given in the context of growing fissures between and among religions and their followers.

Pope John Paul with no embarrassment and fear visited and prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. His many visits to synagogues and mosques as well as Cathedrals and churches of Orthodox Christianity and other Christian communities not aligned with Rome showed the passion of the man for dialogue, peace and harmony.

Towards the end of his life, he visited Syria in 2001 where he went to the great Ummayyad Mosque and said: "For all the times that Muslims and Christians have offended one another, we need to seek forgiveness from the Almighty and to offer each other forgiveness." His dream was to see leaders of religions lead all believers, especially the youth, towards partnership in building a new humanity and a new world for all. For believers, he said: “peace is NOT an option but a duty”.

Pope John Paul II was also known for his moving social encyclicals (the ‘Catholic Church’s best kept secrets’).

His experiential knowledge of Marxism made him capture the contemporary understanding of human work. The encyclical, ‘Laborem Exercens’ (on Human Work) was issued as early as 1981 on the 90th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (the 1st social encyclical that dealt on the relations of labor and capital and the rights of workers).

Then in 1987, he issued yet another social encyclical, Solicitudo Rei Socialis (on Social Concerns celebrating the 20th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio expounding on the social concerns of the Church through SOLIDARITY among peoples and nations in forging new social order).

Then on Labor Day (May 1st) 1991, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope John Paul II issued his 3rd social encyclical entitled Centesimus Annus (the hundredth year of celebrating labor, the rights of workers and their dignity as sons and daughters of God).

Many times, I was asked in Rome, why I was attracted to Pope John Paul II. I usually gave three answers: first was JP II’s passion for dialogue and peace among leaders of religions and all believers; 2nd, JP II’s appreciation and love for the poor and labor; and 3rd, for JP’s passion for the youth – the FUTURE of humankind.

Pope John Paul II began the World Youth Day in 1984. Though world youth day is celebrated annually, the ‘big bang’ happens every four years. This passion brought him to the Philippines for the second time.

In 1995, the Manila World Youth Day gathered a crowd of over five million people – by far the largest gathering of Christians in the World. The Pope danced, prayed and sang with millions in a festival of faith and love.

To many Filipinos, this singular event is, forever, etched in their minds and memory. In a very special way, for the millions of Filipino devotees, Pope JP II was ‘beatified’ on that day at the Luneta.

The 3rd period of my stay in Rome was when Pope John Paul II was aged and sick (2003-2006). The man was frail, sickly and slow in his speech. It was difficult to follow the man as he continued to keep his schedule. Yet, Pope JP II remained a magnet to the very end. His drawing power and the force of his will were undiminished notwithstanding the many ‘fumblings’ of the body and the tongue. He was, to the end, a towering witness of belief and trust in God.

The long vigils at St. Peter’s Square as the lamp burned in his private apartment while he waited for the final call was a moving testimony (not seen before) of people who believed in the man for who he was and for what he did. And when he breathed his last, the people also breathed with relief as the man of God returned to his maker.

May 1st, 2011, barely six years after his death, the Catholic Church, in a special ceremony at St. Peter’s, publicly acclaims Pope John Paul II BLESSED! MABUHAY!

I have been in turmoil questioning over and over again why the poor continue to suffer, not only of man-made disasters, but also natural ones. Why the poor are often the victims of endless calamities? In the Congo, Sudan, the Middle East, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India, Latin America and in Japan post earthquakes and tsunami. The list is endless and the anguish and the cry of the poor DO NOT reach God!

In a mysterious way, this season of Holy Week, we are invited to turn to the reality of the CROSS. Isn’t the message of Holy Week, that is, Jesus Crucified is a disclosure that God is NOT the all powerful one that we were taught from catechism to the liturgies that we celebrate the whole year round.

The God revealed to us on the cross is so weak, so helpless and so poor. Except for a few women and a disciple, he was all alone, abandoned and betrayed by his friends. Yes, this is the message of the cross. Our God is not only so poor and weak but also a suffering one and dying on the cross.

This is a shock! Indeed, a real scandal! How can we reconcile this radical message of the cross with the history of power, victory (often military ones) and wealth that have been the dominant traditions from the time that Emperor Constantine claimed that by the sign of the cross he killed his opponents at the Battle of Ponte Milvio?

Purveyors of power and wealth both in the sacred and the profane world have since engaged in a big cover up of the real meaning of the Crucified Lord. Tragically, they go to the extent of crafting new myths and symbol including regal titles, throne complete with Triple Crown, miters and scepter for the Lord who died on the cross.

Jesus, the Son of God, and died in the Cross, revolutionized our understanding of God and upset the religious and political institutions. The Crucified Lord yesterday, today and forever, continues to hound us even today. Our God is NOT the all-powerful one! Much less is He the all TRANSCENDENT One. Definitely, God - revealed by Jesus in the Cross is NOT a sort of a SUPERNATURAL DEITY!

The message of the Crucified Lord tells us a different story line that the world is used to hear. In the mouth of Caiphas, the High Priest, the world’s story line is ‘redemptive violence’, that is, to kill one man to save the nation. The story line of the Crucified Christ is a ‘redemptive suffering’, that is, to offer one’ s life, suffer and die that others may live.

The story line of the cross is a radically different life from what the world tells us. It invites all believers to live a life of simplicity and at the service of the poor and all who were on the fringes of society. These so called unclean, unwanted, unacceptable people, the pagans, the sinners, the prisoners, and the lepers are now the number one in the roll call of Jesus of Golgotha. These were the people through whom God chooses to reveal Himself.

The Jesus of Golgotha was branded as a troublemaker, a blasphemer, a scandal to all. He had the audacity and the RAGE to question the entire teaching of established religion about God, the Temple and the Law. It is a revelation that has rocked the world ever since. This has been the uncomfortable truth that the experts and religious leaders want to deny, cover up and reject.

Yet, to find the deepest experience of God, we have to retrieve the real meaning of the cross that is at the heart of the mission and the following of Jesus.

For centuries, pilgrims, knights and ‘seekers’ have all been looking for the so-called ‘Holy Grail’. I never understood the real meaning of the ‘Holy Grail’ until I was confronted by the cruel killings of OMI Martyrs - Bishop Ben de Jesus in front of the Jolo Cathedral in 1997; Fr. Benjamin Inocencio at the back of the Cathedral in the year 2000; and Fr. Reynaldo Jesus Roda in his mission station in Tabawan, Tawi Tawi in 2008. Then I begin to surmise… Is not the cross the real ‘Holy Grail’ of human and divine encounter?

The martyrs like them give a name to the crucified peoples. Here we speak of the deaths of millions of people, especially of children, in what used to be called Third World countries, in the form of poverty, illnesses, exclusion, wars, massacres, particularly those of children, who are in no way to blame. What is happening is undeniable, but society and government do not even give these victims a name, let alone grant any sort of dignity to these deaths.

My uncle Johnny Mercado quoted in his latest Inquirer Column the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel who was able to capture this ‘absence of God’ in his book “Night.” At Auschwitz, 14-year-old Wiesel and other Holocaust prisoners watched the Gestapo execute a child.

“‘Where is God?’ someone behind me asked,” Wiesel recalls. And I heard a voice within me, answer: “Here He is, hanging on this gallow.”

Though the cross remains the most powerful expression of the Christian story line. The story ends not on Good Friday! We do know that on the third day, God raises him up. And this Jesus whom they crucified is now RISEN from the dead and has become the LIGHT of the world. By his resurrection, he has conquered death and has restored the fullness of life. EASTER proclaims that ‘Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, all the time belongs to him and all the ages, to him the glory and power through every age forever. Amen.’

There is the usual assumption that the elimination of economic inequality for certain ethnic group in multi-ethnic societies will, eventually, greatly reduce ethnic tensions. Our neighbors, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, give us differing examples of multi-ethnic societies with potential for social conflicts.

The simple economic explanations and cultural explanations, such as religious divide between the groups, do not fully account for the ethnic conflict. Instead, it is necessary to consider the internal relations within the ethnic groups in explaining conflict.

In Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, the government’s capacity for group mediation in society, especially the way political leaders respond to challenges of politics of inclusion, affects the nature and outcome of conflict. Ethnic peace is, to a significant degree, dependent on government’s responsiveness to the root causes of the social cleavages in the community.

A responsive government creates an environment in which individuals enjoy mobility. People, regardless if they belong to the majority or the minority population, can obtain decent jobs, and they are able to meet their basic educational, medical and housing needs.

The state has an important role in changing discrimination and injustice that the minority population feels and perceives is perpetrated by members of the majority. Wherever the state responsiveness has been weak, segments of the majority group perceive the state as a tool of the few wealthy elite, leading to attempt to scapegoat and attack the minority group.

The countries in the region that have experienced the sharpest drops in growth are those with divided societies and weak institutions for managing conflicts. Conflicts have in recent years, been a major obstacle to development in Asia and the Pacific. Sad to note that the Philippines is now considered a classic case of divided society and weak institution notwithstanding the slogan of a “strong republic” and ‘matuwid na daan’.

In many respect, conflict is the result of poor governance. If all sections of society can participate in decision-making and development, and if institutions for such participation are in place, emergence of violent conflicts can be significantly reduced. It is true that the roots of conflict can be traced back to history during the formation of states, but the way various social and ethnic cleavages are managed, and the way natural resources are divided, spell the difference between manageable conflicts and explosive ones.

We need not re-invent the wheels in dealing with our social cleavages, particularly in Southern Philippines. There are well-established measures that respond well to societal cleavages. Tops on the list is good governance through improved accountability, predictability and transparency. These are key elements that empower the state to resolve differences in ways that are both fair and seen to be fair.

Second are the participatory processes that are important in building social cohesion. Definitely, there is a need to expand participation of all stakeholders not only in peace making but also in projects that promote constructive interfaces between public and private sector.

A classic example of non-participatory peace process is the on-going peace talks both in Southern Philippines and at the national level. While Government and MILF and GRP and NDF continue to debate on reneging commitments as embodied in the consensus points on ancestral domain and the Hague declaration, the stakeholders are practically blank on what are those consensus points.

Third is the urgent need to decentralize decision and policy making in the country. With the National Capital Region as “de facto” the Republic of the Philippines, the other regions are inevitably relegated to the margin. The operative words are “decentralization” and “subsidiarity”. We have a LONG way to go, because NCR and the highly centralized government do NOT surrender their perks and prerogatives without a struggle.

The usual culprits in the “unpeace” in the world are the three “evils” known as poverty, politics of exclusion and injustice – perceived or real. This conclusion has led not a few scholars to believe that economic causes explain the recurrence and even sustainability of internal conflict.

There are two interesting developments that invite a second look at religions. The first is the growing assertiveness of religions and ethnicity in their varying forms and degrees in public life. The second is the fact that the confessional and ethnic characters often describe contemporary conflicts and internal wars.

These two developments give credence to the assertion that “the nature of war determines the nature of peace. This means that the factors which produce and sustain the conflict will directly impact the ensuing peace settlement.” (Markus Kostner, et al. From Civil War to Civil Society, 1997).

The interesting development that directly impacts peace-building is the re-introduction” of religions in the public discourse. Religions are no longer considered a simple variable in the equation that goes up and down depending on the moods and tempers of the protagonists.

Today, there is a growing awareness that religions are considered neither simply a dimension in a conflict or peace building nor merely a mobilizing vehicle for national or ethnic passions. In fact, religious identity permeates groups and provides the well of assumptions that direct decisions and behavior. (Roy Hange. The Curtain of Fire: Religious Identity and Emerging Conflicts at MCC Web Site)

In many ways, this development has unsettled the “dominant” secular perspective dating back from the Renaissance that has relegated religions to the private domain of the citizen and individuals.

It also threatens the “accepted” doctrine of separation of state and religion. In most cases, this doctrine has now become a handicap, because it fails to understand the roles of religions in shaping not only civilizations and cultures but also the political aspirations of people who do profess religions rather than secularism.

In the mid 90s, the seminal work of Prof. Samuel Huntington, the Clash of Civilizations, points to the importance of religions in relationship between and among civilizations. According to this view, religions become crucial, because they form civilizations and they are the defining elements of culture.

His thesis contends that the fundamental source of conflict in the postmodern world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. He believes that the great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. The new divisions in the world are defined not in terms of their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.

It is no accident that Religion as observed in practically all internal conflicts becomes either the “Bridge” or the “Wall” in social interaction, that is, both in war and peace.

This new focus on religion, particularly in peace making and post conflict reconstruction has led to faith-based peace advocacy, peace making and conflict transformation. It is the recognition that religion notwithstanding the discomfort of the “secular” person remains still the most potent and fascinating form of social capital.

Religions have proved to be the enduring and “stubborn” inheritance of humankind both to believers and secularized modern peoples. Notwithstanding the legacy of the Enlightenment, religion continues to assert its role in the public domain.

Despite the debates regarding religions’ public role, they shall continue to persist and often put in disarray the “secularized construct” of what is or should be in the peace equation. Religions provide the very basis and glue of any peacemaking and peace-building without which all attempts at peace are rendered incomplete or futile or doomed to fail.

Why? The answer is simple. Peacemaking and people’s basic rights are not simple liberal constructs in “Res Publica”. These values, too, constitute the religious and moral grammar of human interaction. And in a pluralistic society enriched by religious understanding (as in Islam and Christianity), we need a kind of religious “literacy”, and not a “bracketing” of religions, to be able to navigate the many metaphors, stories, myths and modes of telling them that dominate the relationships between our differing religious “families”.

Today, we continue to look for a story line, in the absence of which our peacemaking and peace-building, to say the last, will be the state of amorphous incoherence. There is no ready-made story to proffer to peacemakers and peace activists. But the path for our age is perhaps the need for a fresher look at our faith traditions, thereby finding the connect between our many texts and deeds to be able to weave the common story line for peace and unity.