Bishop Bacani celebrates 20th anniversary with new book and new hope
Manila (AsiaNews) Readers can experience prayer, suffering, solitude and a rediscovering of "God's love and art of loving in Truth" in Manila Bishop Teodoro Bacani's book "God's Heart and Ours", released on his 20th anniversary as bishop.
The book, the bishop explains, is the work of a man who "has just come out of the tomb."
Last year a journalist wrote a scathing article accusing the bishop of having harassed his secretary.
Despite the article having been published by a tabloid magazine and based on unreliable sources, the Manila media blew up the story to exaggerated proportions.
The bishop wrote "God's Heart and Ours" during three and a half months of solitude and prayer at Our Lady of the Philippines Trappist monastery located on the southern island of Guimaras. The book contains the bishop's deep reflections on God's love, the beauty of creation, prayer and inner suffering. The book is also a clear expression of the bishop's thanks for his life experiences and for his mercy toward those who have caused him so much grief.
In the book's introduction, Bishop Bacani wrote that the treatise is "a result of my experience of God's love, especially through recent events that have shaped my life. After I thought that my own articulation may prove to be helpful to others in their discovery and response to that same love."
In the book's introduction, Jesuit Father Catalino Arevalo describes the work as "spiritual reading in the best sense, obviously the fruit of much prayer, prayer that has lived through much priestly dedication and labor; through trial and suffering; through an ongoing process of growth and conversion, of deepening self-understanding and, surely, longing for an ever more authentic response to the Lord's compassion, forgiveness and love."
After reading the book, Father Averalo stated that it leads "readers to prayer, to that Presence their hearts long for."
At his twentieth anniversary party at the Pope Pius XII Center in Manila, the bishop confided he usually celebrates his birthdays and anniversaries in the company of hisfamily and close friends. But this time he invited those belonging to the numerous parishes where he has worked, indicating a grand celebration was in order because, "I have just come out of the tomb."
Still, a biased media continues to hound the bishop. In an article published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer April 12, Bishop Bacani supposedly endorsed presidential candidate Fernando Poe Junior during his homily at his Easter Mass celebration for the charismatic El Shaddai organization.
"Whether from malice or merely out of a desire to make money without respect for the truth and at my expense, this reporter Carlito Pablo fabricated the report and invented the quotations supposedly coming from me," he wrote in a press release sent to the Catholic Bishop's Conference media office.
Despite his letter to the Inquirer, asking that the report be rectified, the newspaper still has not responded. (SE)
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