Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David urged Filipinos to redefine hope as moral vigilance and courage, reflecting on 2025 as a year of loss and crisis despite being declared a “Year of Hope.”
In his Christmas reflection, the prelate of Kalookan recalled that Pope Francis declared 2025 a Year of Hope, yet it was also “the year he died,” leaving the Church “in mourning.”
“For many Filipinos, it did not feel like a year of hope at all,” the cardinal said, as he listed unresolved injustices, disasters, political instability, and social crises confronting the country.
He cited “the unresolved anguish of the missing sabungeros,” “the families of drug war victims still waiting for justice,” and flood-control projects exposed “as monuments to corruption.”
David described widespread calamities, saying, “We saw scenes of total disaster,” including communities stranded on rooftops, flash floods, piled cars, and homes “shattered into rubble by earthquakes.”
He also pointed to “quieter devastation,” noting that parents watched families unravel under online gambling addiction, which he described as “a disaster without floodwaters or fault lines.”
Politically, David said, “We saw power fracture in strange and unsettling ways,” citing a former president’s arrest abroad, a stalled impeachment, weakened institutions, and eroding public trust.
Despite these conditions, the cardinal insisted hope must be found precisely in darkness, quoting Gabriel Marcel: “Hope is not optimism. It is not the denial of darkness.”
David said hope appeared “in journalists who refused silence,” “in citizens who kept watch,” and “in families who refused to forget their dead,” calling such hope “fragile” yet “stubborn.”
“Hope is not what we feel when things go well—it is what we choose when they do not,” before ending with, “Merry Christmas!” the prelate said.
