POPE-PHILIPPINES/EX-STREET GIRL Former street girl recounts experience of meeting pope

Record ID: 335813

  • Title: POPE-PHILIPPINES/EX-STREET GIRL Former street girl recounts experience of meeting pope
  • Date: 19th January 2015
  • Summary: MANILA, PHILIPPINES (JANUARY 19, 2015) (REUTERS) TULAY NG KABATAAN FOUNDATION BUILDING THAT POPE FRANCIS VISITED POSTER READING (English): "WELCOME HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS" BUILDING COURTYARD CHILDREN UNDER CUSTODY OF TULAY NG KABATAAN FOUNDATION BOARD READING (English): "WELCOME POPE FRANCIS" FORMER STREET GIRL, GYLZELLE IRIS PALOMAR, STANDING PALOMAR LOOKING AROUND POS
  • Embargoed: 3rd February 2015 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Philippines
  • Country: Philippines
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA8M57MEW758MNSGXW4DF7D2O1E
  • Story Text: The tears of a former street girl prompted Pope Francis to change his entire sermon, during a youth gathering in the Philippines on Sunday (January 18).
    Glyzelle Iris Palomar is a resident of a Church-run community, where the pontiff stopped for a surprise visit during his trip.
    "He reminds me of my father. My father is also that kind," said the 12-year-old, a day after Francis responded to her questions at the youth gathering.
    "That's the only time I could go near and hug the pope," she said.
    Catholic priest Matthieu Dauchez, who runs the shelter, said the children had written 1,000 letters to Francis, asking him to visit them.
    "What I feel after all the events in the Philippines is that he wanted to show compassion through what he did, not through what he said. And it's obvious in Tacloban, it's obvious with the old sisters in the Manila Cathedral, with the three children, with Glyzelle, it's so obvious. So his message is to say not through words, but through actions really," Dauchez said.
    On Sunday, Palomar's question to Francis moved the Argentine Pope to put aside most of his own prepared speech to respond during the gathering at a Catholic university in Manila.
    Palomar asked the pope on his last full day in the Philippines why God allowed bad things to happen to children.
    "Many children are abandoned by their parents? Many of them became victims and bad things have happened to them, like drug addiction and prostitution. Why does God allow this to happen, even if the children are not at fault? Why is it that only a few people help us?" Palomar asked.
    She then broke down in tears and could not finish her prepared welcome.
    The pope hugged her and later put aside most of his own prepared speech to respond.
    "Why do children suffer?" the Argentine Pope said, speaking in his native Spanish. An aide translated his words into English for the crowd of about 30,000 young people on the grounds of the Church-run university.
    "I invite each one of you to ask yourselves: 'Have I learned how to weep, how to cry'?"
    Children can be seen living on the streets of the Philippine capital, as they often do in many poor Asian countries, surviving by begging and picking through garbage in vast dumps.
    The United Nations says 1.2 million children live on the streets in the Philippines.
    According to the Child Protection Network Foundation, 35.1 percent of children were living in poverty in 2009, the last year such data was available. Nearly 33 percent of Filipinos live in slums.
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