Edith Regalado

WHAT used to be so ordinary fare in this part of the country suddenly became so important; just because this man who used to be Davao City mayor for 23 years emerged as the 16th President of the country.

Covering him then would mean getting a repeated ‘No’ for an answer. ‘No, I am not running for president’, he would tell us, Davao-based reporters, every now and then that we cornered him for the same question.

Until that day on Nov. 27, 2015 when he finally declared he was running for president. I told myself, “This is it. Brace for a different coverage this time because you have somebody from a far southern city vying for the highest office of the land.”

It was on May 9 that it dawned on me that Duterte was no longer just ours, as if we have some sense of proprietorship to his being Dabawenyo and being ours and ours alone.

The challenge of the days that followed was basically we had to keep up, not only with the rest of the mediamen who were sent this way, but also with our own output, making sure that all grounds and issues were covered. I could not believe that I think I did about 13 stories in just a day during the early parts after the May 9 elections.

And there was already interest in what was his favorite food, clothes, shoes and everything and anything about Duterte that everyone in media wanted to know. What we used to consider as very ordinary about Duterte was suddenly very important to everyone else who were deployed here to trail his every move before his inaugural last June 30.

Things took a drastic change when relations between media and the once cordial presumptive president turned sour. He became hard to reach and nowhere would he want to get near anyone from media. He vowed not to grant any media interviews until his term ends.

That was it. It gave way to the “I boycott you, you boycott me” stance which until now prevails, except that he gives his pronouncements through the government television network.

Nevertheless, I realized that Rodrigo Roa Duterte became one of the most important coverages I ever did in my 23 years with The Philippine STAR.

Suddenly, he is president and is no longer just a small city mayor that we got so used to in seeking answers to issues many may consider to be just local but were what dwell in the hearts of the Dabawenyos. Certainly, I am still a Dabawenyo at heart.

I CONSIDER the visit of Pope Francis in January 2015 as my most unforgettable coverage as reporter of The Philippine STAR.

It has been said that when you choose a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. I did not view my coverage of the papal visit as work for two reasons: I have always wanted to see the charismatic pontiff in person and the assignment allowed me to witness history firsthand, the main reason why I chose to be a journalist.

I was assigned to cover Pope Francis’ encounter with the youth on Jan. 18, 2015 at the University of Santo Tomas, my alma mater. It was raining that time. All entrance gates were jam- packed and phone signals were jammed but those did not dampen the spirit of the energetic audience.

The most memorable part of the event was the speech of Glyzelle Palomar, a former street child. The 12-year-old girl asked the pope a question that has puzzled theologians for centuries.

“There are many children who have been abandoned by parents. Many of them have been victimized by bad things like drugs and prostitution. Why does God allow these things to happen?” Palomar said before bursting into tears.

I am sure that Pope Francis knew the answer to the girl’s question, which has been raised by those who doubt the existence of God. For instance, he could have cited St. Thomas Aquinas, who believed that God allows evil to happen because he can produce something good out of it.

But the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics was also aware that it was not the right time to lecture about theology. It was a time to reach out to his flock and to remind them of the need to demonstrate God’s mercy and compassion to others. And he did just that in his 39-minute impromptu address.

“She (Palomar) is the only one who has put a question for which there is no answer. She couldn’t put it into words but expressed it with tears,” the Pope said.

“Only when we, too, can cry about the things you said can we come close to answering that question. Why do children suffer so much? Why do children suffer? When the heart is able to ask itself and weep, then we can understand something,” he added.

Pope Francis believes the plight of the poor is not understood because the world “does not know how to cry.” “Certain realities of life we only see through eyes cleansed by our tears,” he said. It was very difficult to write about the event because of two reasons. First, a print journalist had to come up with something new, something that his readers have not seen on television or read in the internet. Second, no article, no matter how well written, can faithfully capture such dramatic moment. Something will definitely be lost along the way. It was not the last time that I wrote about an event of the pope for this newspaper. Last December, my editors asked me to cover then president Benigno Aquino III’s participation in the Paris climate talks, which was part of his three-state Europe trip. Aquino also went to Italy to meet with the Filipino community and Vatican City to reciprocate the Pope’s visit to the Philippines.

During their meeting, the Pope asked the president to pray for him. And Aquino, who had differences with the Catholic Church in the Philippines, was visibly struck after the encounter.