He never aspired to be a priest. After he rose to be a bishop, he implied that he suffered from impostor syndrome. And when Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines is asked if he could become the first Asian pope — a frequent question in recent years — he says it is impossible.
“Thinking of myself in that position, no, no, I laugh at it,” Cardinal Tagle told the BBC in 2015. “I cannot even manage my life. How can I manage a worldwide community?”
By then he had already been talked about as a potential replacement for Pope Benedict XVI. Now 67, Cardinal Tagle (pronounced TAG-leh) is once again on many unofficial short lists of “papabile” cardinals, or those with a good shot at succeeding Pope Francis. The most prominent candidate from Asia, his election would be an emphatic marker of the Roman Catholic Church’s shift away from Europe to Africa and Asia, where it continues to grow.
Francis was the only pope in the modern era who was born outside Europe. If Cardinal Tagle ascends to the papacy, he would be the first Asian pontiff in modern times. (Several popes in antiquity were from Syria, which is technically in West Asia, though it is now considered part of the Middle East.)
At the Vatican, Cardinal Tagle oversees missionary work. Widely known by his nickname “Chito,” he is often called the “Asian Francis” for his ability to connect with the poor, his call for action against climate change and his criticism of the “harsh” stance adopted by Catholic clerics toward gay people, divorced people and unwed mothers. He is popular for his humility, and his homilies have drawn the faithful to the pews and to Facebook streams.
But as leader of the church in the Philippines, he was criticized by activists and fellow priests as being timid about the scourge of clerical sex abuse. Those complaints continued as his profile in the church rose. Last month, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, an advocacy group, urged the Vatican to investigate Cardinal Tagle’s conduct in relation to cases of alleged clerical abuse in the Central African Republic and New Zealand. (The group also sought inquiries into five other cardinals.)
Separately, in 2022, Pope Francis removed the entire management team of Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican’s charitable arm, including Cardinal Tagle, who served as president. An external review had found management and morale problems at Caritas’s head office.
At home, Cardinal Tagle has been faulted for not adequately addressing former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, in which tens of thousands of people were summarily executed.
“Had Chito spoken clearly and courageously during the Duterte administration, fewer people could have died,” said the Rev. Robert Reyes, who was in seminary with Cardinal Tagle.
At the time, the cardinal was archbishop of Manila. He called for an “end to the waste of human lives” but did not confront Mr. Duterte directly.
Cardinal Tagle did not respond to a request for an interview.
Today, Cardinal Tagle is one of five cardinals from the Philippines. Some Vatican insiders see Cardinal Pablo Virgilio Siongco David, who has a lower profile, as a potential pope as well.
When the Philippine legislature proposed a bill to make it easier to access contraception, Cardinal Tagle called on lawmakers to reject it. But he said later that he disagreed with fellow members of the clergy who threatened several lawmakers with excommunication.
“He tries to persuade people rather than intimidate them,” said the Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, who taught Cardinal Tagle at The Catholic University of America in Washington in the 1980s.
While Cardinal Tagle was leader of the church in the Philippines, Mr. Duterte frequently mocked Catholicism and insulted Pope Francis.
Mr. Duterte has said he was molested by a priest when he was a child. Some priests, including Cardinal David, criticized his drug war.But Cardinal Tagle stayed silent. His critics often point to Cardinal Jaime Sin, who was instrumental in toppling the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
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On the issue of clerical abuse, Cardinal Tagle has said that survivors’ accounts “wound” him. But he has also said that survivors should seek justice through the church’s canonical process because “the victims, once exposed to the public, might also be shamed.” The church, he said, should also care for “the abuser, who is definitely lost.”
“This is a very Asian approach,” he told the Union Catholic Asian News in 2013, “and that approach leads to healing.”
“The sad thing is that Cardinal Tagle is very much out of touch with the realities facing the sexual abuse of children by priests and brothers,” said the Rev. Shay Cullen, an Irish priest working in the Philippines. He said the cardinal had told him the church was more concerned about matters like divorce.
Cardinal Tagle’s approach has contributed to a culture of impunity in the church in the Philippines, according to a watchdog group, BishopAccountability.org.
Cardinal Tagle has acknowledged being criticized for “not being strong, that I don’t condemn enough,” but he said he took heart from Francis’s example, according to a 2015 interview with Crux, a publication specializing in the Catholic Church. “Who am I to judge?” he said, repeating Francis’s position on gay priests.
Born in Manila, Cardinal Tagle was raised in the city of Imus by parents who worked in a bank. He wanted to be a doctor but entered seminary after attending Ateneo de Manila, a top Jesuit university.
Ordained in 1982 at the age of 24, he later wrote his doctoral thesis on Pope Paul VI at Catholic University.
In Washington, on his own initiative, he regularly visited a hospice for people suffering from AIDS, said the Rev. Peter Bernardi, a classmate.
He returned to Imus in 1992, where he was known to travel by bicycle or jeepney, a cheap mode of public transport. In the following decades, he was named archbishop of Manila, then a cardinal, and eventually he moved to the Vatican.
Now he could rise to the helm of the church.
Back during the election of Benedict’s successor, who proved to be Francis, Cardinal Tagle wrote to Father Komonchak, asking his former teacher to “pray for me.”
“I took him to mean that he was overwhelmed by the possibility of his being elected pope,” Father Komonchak said. “Who wouldn’t be?”
Camille Elemia contributed reporting from Imus, the Philippines, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.
