page_title: Luis Antonio Tagle
section_title: Cardinal
hierarchical_section_title: Luis Antonio Tagle / Cardinal
caption_attribution_description: English: Cardinal Luis Tagle making a suprise appearance at the Million People March protest held in Luneta.
context_page_description: Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle is a Filipino cardinal of the Catholic Church who has been the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples since December 2019. He was the 32nd Archbishop of Manila from 2011 to 2019. Tagle also serves as the president of Caritas International, a federation of Catholic relief, development, and social service organizations, and of the Catholic Biblical Federation.
  Tagle, who generally prefers to be called by his nickname "Chito" rather than by his clerical title, has been involved in many social issues in the Philippines, with emphasis on helping the poor while defending the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion, contraception, and what he has called "practical atheism". Dubbed as "Asian Francis" or "Asia's Catholic Superstar", he is often seen as a representative of the Church's progressive wing. Tagle has criticized the Church for using "harsh words" to describe LGBT as well as divorced and remarried Catholics, whom he believes should be allowed to receive Holy Communion on a case-by-case basis.
context_section_description: Pope Benedict XVI announced he was elevating Archbishop Tagle to the College of Cardinals on October 24, 2012. Tagle himself had been notified the night before. At that consistory, he was assigned the titular church of San Felice da Cantalice a Centocelle. Tagle was the seventh Filipino to be made a cardinal of the Catholic Church. When he became a cardinal he was the second youngest one. On November 30, 2012, upon his return to the Philippines, he presided at a thanksgiving Mass at the San Fernando de Dilao Church in Paco, Manila, which President Benigno Aquino III, Vice-President Jejomar Binay, and Mayor Alfredo Lim of Manila attended.
  On January 31, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Tagle to serve as a member of the Presidential Committee of the Pontifical Council for the Family and the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants.
  Tagle was mentioned by some news organizations as a possible candidate for election as pope during the papal conclave that elected Pope Francis in 2013.
  Tagle led the National Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary at the San Fernando de Dilao Church on June 8, 2013.
  In a March 2015 interview, Tagle said the Catholic Church needed to develop a new language for addressing homosexuals, unwed mothers, and divorced and remarried Catholics because "what constituted in the past an acceptable way of showing mercy" changes and needs to be re-imagined. He said:
  [T]he harsh words that were used in the past to refer to gays and divorced and separated people, the unwed mothers etc., in the past they were quite severe. Many people who belonged to those groups were branded and that led to their isolation from the wider society. ...But we are glad to see and hear shifts in that. ...[F]or the Catholic Church, there is a pastoral approach which happens in counselling, in the sacrament of reconciliation where individual persons and individual cases are taken uniquely or individually so that a help, a pastoral response, could be given adequately to the person.
  Following the publication of Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato si', Cardinal Tagle launched a campaign in the Philippines to collect signatures for a petition against anthropogenic global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions.
  As the Synod on the Family opened public discussion of allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion, Tagle said he was open to hearing arguments on the question. He said: "We have a principle we have to believe in. But the openness comes on pastoral judgments you have to make in concrete situations, because no two cases are alike." As the 2014 session of the synod approached he said he hoped that "the pastoral care of divorced and civilly remarried couples is debated openly and with good will," but emphasized other challenges drawn from his Philippine experience, especially the separation of married couples from one another and their children caused by poverty and migration. After the synod, he said:
  I speak for my Philippines. In the preparation phase, I spoke quite a bit about poverty and the emigration phenomenon: two issues which are not exclusive to the family context affected the very core of family life. In our country there is no law on divorce. But people do divorce out of love. Fathers and mothers separate out of love for their children and one of them goes to the other side of the world to work. These separations are triggered by love. In the Philippines and countries affected by migration, we must, as a Church, accompany these people, help them to be faithful to their wives and husbands.
  In 2015, he said that "Every situation for those who are divorced and remarried is quite unique. To have a general rule might be counterproductive in the end. ...We cannot give one formula for all."
  Cardinal Tagle is a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Pontifical Council for the Family, Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and S
caption: Tagle at the Million People March in Rizal Park
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