Happy All Saints’ Day to all our readers!

It’s All Saints’ Day today and it is a time to honor the saints that the Catholic Church put in its very long list of saints that gives the faithful Christian a very good example to follow. I honestly don’t know the exact number of saints that the Catholic Church has named. Mostly the saints that we read in the Bible are called saints because of their physical presence with the Lord Jesus Christ. But we have modern-day saints that the Catholic Church has or-dained at St. Peter’s Square.

For us Filipinos, we have St. Lorenzo Ruiz and St. Pedro Calungsod. Today we have famous popes, like St. Pope John Paul II and very recently St. Pope John 23rd and St. Pope Paul VI, who were elevated to sainthood be-cause of their life as holy men. I really glad that the Vatican has named all these very recent popes as saints because they were great examples of holy men when they were alive.

Three people in Poland who lived within a few kilometers from each other but never knew each other became saints. I’m referring to St. Faustina Kowalska, known worldwide as the Secretary of our Lord Jesus and a great Apostle for the Divine Mercy. Then there’s St. Maximillian Kolbe a Conven-tional Franciscan Friar who asked his Nazi German captors to execute him instead of the man who had a family.

And of course there is St. Pope John Paul II, who made the two St. Faustina and St. Kolbe as saints and he himself is now a saint, who was able to free Europe from the clutches of communism. They all lived at the height of World War II. Of course, there are many other saints. Japan has more saints than the Philippines because of the persecution by the Shoguns. Korea too has a lot of saints.

One saint that has very recently captured the hearts and minds of Fili-pinos is St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. I was lucky to visit with my family the uncorrupted body of this holy saint who had the Stigmata last year a day be-fore his feast day in San Giovanni Rotondo. Just a couple of weeks ago, fol-lowers of St. Padre Pio came to the Philippines to bring to us the uncorrupted heart of this holy incorruptible saint. While I have already seen his sacred body, I still attempted to go to the Metropolitan Cathedral to see his rel-ic/heart, but I did not expect a huge turnout of people that trooped to the Ca-thedral. We could not even find a parking area late in the evening. So we end-ed not seeing the Relic of St. Padre Pio.

Mind you, not all saints have incorrupt bodies. A good example was when St. Peter’s grave was located deep inside the Vatican, he was only bones. The same is true to St. Mary Magdalene whose skull was preserve in a huge Church in Provence, France close to Marseille. Even our Filipino Saints, San Pedro Calungsod and San Lorenzo Ruiz have no bones to show.

This brings us to the issue about cremation. While it is supposedly a cheaper alternative to buying an expensive casket or cemetery plot, but we do not know if the deceased man or woman could have incorrupt bodies because of their leading a saintly life. But when you cremate them we would never know if God blessed them with incorruptible bodies.

So let’s go on with our Catholic tradition and go to the cemeteries and let our grandchildren meet the graves of our ancestors and perhaps giving them a good example of what they did during their lifetime. It is a way of be-ing proud of what our forefathers had done to make us what we are today. * * *

Mr. Antonio Puyat III, a lead researcher of Skymorials, wrote me a letter telling me that the 2018 Global Index Report of Skymorials revealed that the Philippines is the second highest-ranked country in the world that remembers its cherished loved ones. Of course, Mr. Puyat must have known that Filipino culture strongly values its commitment to the family, which puts the Philippines as second only to Mexico.

Antonio Puyat III said: “What sets the Philippines apart from the rest of the world is despite its varied groups and cultures, every cultural subset has an inherent deep love and respect for family at its core.” Today Filipinos troop to the national, local and private cemeteries to make this reality come true.

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For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@ gmail.com. His columns can be accessed through www. philstar.com.