Written on January 18, 2015
Pope Francis has arrived in the Philippines! The Catholics in this country, which is the 3rd most Catholic nation in the world, are teeming with excitement. Throughout each of our meetings throughout Mindanao, Catholics have let us know about the upcoming visit.There are pictures of the Pope hanging up in offices, in front of offices, and even as the backdrop on someone’s phone. The Papal visit made the front page of the newspaper, and it is carefully documented in calendars and schedules across the country, as if they could forget the dates.
Welcome, Papa Francis!
It is my speculation that many of the people with whom we are meeting probably assume that we are Catholic, which may be due to a number of reasons. The first one being that Catholic Relief Services(CRS) is our host and contact during this course. Another could be that people tend to want to find similarities in others, especially when meeting for the first time. The meetings we attend are relatively short from the researcher’s perspective, in that we have to build trust in order gather as much information as possible in a few hours’ time. This is a challenge to say the least. We each have an area of study or personal interest we would like to cover so the group dynamic is important so we know the right questions to ask. I believe that it is easier for others to relate to us when they find commonalities among us, which is something I think about when I meet with people.