Is Cardinal Tagle’s star waning?

May 26, 2023

On May 13, the Church’s largest charitable entity, Caritas International, elected Japanese Archbishop Tarcisius Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo as its new president, a role held until now by Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, once widely seen as a top contender for the papacy.

The former archbishop of Manila, Tagle’s star began to rise with Pope Francis’ visit to Sri Lanka and the Philippines in 2015. He was seen as sharp, organised, highly popular and incredibly charismatic, with a knack for reaching the multitudes and drawing people in from the peripheries.

The Pope’s closing Mass in Manila during that trip is still on record as among the best attended papal liturgies recorded, with an estimated 6-7 million people present. Tagle also shares many of Pope Francis’ pastoral priorities, from attention to the poor, his missionary drive, and his insistence on the need to be more welcoming of those who don’t fit the Catholic ideal, especially LGBTQ individuals and those who are divorced and remarried.

In the wake of the 2015 papal trip, Tagle was dubbed “the Asian Pope Francis” and was seen as a frontrunner among the papabile, meaning those with the best odds of being elected pope.

His profile was further boosted when, in May 2015, just a few months after the Pope’s trip to the Philippines, he was named president of Caritas International, the world’s second-largest charitable organisation, behind Red Cross International. Tagle was re-elected to the position in 2019.

He was given a red hat by Pope Francis in 2013 and was named as a delegate to the 2018 Synod of Bishops on Young People. Francis brought him to Rome in 2019 to lead the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples in the midst of his revamp of the Roman Curia.

Tagle has also enjoyed wildly successful TV and internet broadcasts, making him a Catholic rockstar throughout much of Asia during his time in Manila.

The broad consensus is that he is a kind man and pastor who is deeply committed to his people and to implementing the Francis agenda, although some of his fellow prelates have quietly raised questions over the years about his political and managerial effectiveness.

Last November, Pope Francis, in a surprising display of papal authority, fired Caritas International’s entire leadership team, including Tagle; its secretary general, a Frenchman of Indian descent named Aloysius John; and the organisation’s vice presidents, its treasurer and its ecclesiastic assistant.

The Nov 22 announcement was accompanied by a lengthy statement from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, which oversees the Caritas confederation, which said the decision had been made as the result of an external investigation.

While finding no evidence of sexual or financial impropriety, the dicastery’s prefect, Canadian Jesuit Cardinal Michael Czerny, in the statement identified “real deficiencies” in management that had seriously affected “team spirit and staff morale.”

Francis named an interim administrator to draft new statutes and to run Caritas until its spring general assembly, which is taking place this week in Rome, and during which new leadership was elected. Tagle was tasked with staying on as liaison with Caritas until the temporary administration was over.

Much of the blame for Caritas’s internal woes fell on John, whose brief 2019-2022 tenure has been described as problematic, with staff complaining they had been routinely harassed and bullied. An internal investigation was carried out by the Caritas board after complaints began in 2021, however, no action was taken until Czerny’s department stepped in last year to conduct their own external investigation, resulting in the firing of the leadership team.

In the wake of the decision, many were disappointed to hear that Tagle had been aware of John’s mistreatment, but had failed to take appropriate action, leading to questions about his administrative abilities.

He also fell under scrutiny in the wake of a 2019 CNN report on the case of Belgian Salesian priest Fr Luk Delft, who once served as director of the Caritas office in Central African Republic but who, in 2012, was charged with child sexual abuse and the possession of child pornography.

At the time, an internal Caritas investigation was conducted which found that Tagle and other leaders had been made aware of Delft’s criminal conviction in 2017, a full year before Delft was tapped as director of Caritas Central African Republic, raising further questions about Tagle’s oversight.

Some observers lay at least partial blame for the internal difficulties with Tagle, suggesting he took a largely hands-off role during his second term as president.