Not Sure It Can Be Copied : Filipino Cardinal Calls Revolution a ‘Miracle’

Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines, in his first U.S. appearance since playing a key role in the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, said the peaceful Filipino revolution was “a miracle of grace” that other troubled countries may have difficulty emulating.

“I am not sure that ‘people power’--as it happened in Manila--could be duplicated anywhere else,” Sin, considered a leading proponent of liberation theology within the Roman Catholic faith, told a crowd of 500 in St. Ignatius Church on the University of San Francisco campus.

“People power” is a phrase used in the Philippines to describe the assertive, but nonviolent, use of civil disobedience by ordinary citizens to overcome armed opposition.

Its greatest use came when 2 million people, at the urging of Sin, flooded streets in Manila last February to prevent soldiers loyal to Marcos from smashing rebel forces supporting opposition leader Corazon Aquino.

They succeeded and a few days later, Marcos fled the country and Aquino was installed in his place.

“The Filipino people are gentle, naturally joyous, very affectionate,” Sin observed during an hourlong talk laced with humorous anecdotes. “We succeeded because our young men (soldiers) could not bring themselves to harm defenseless civilians. Would that be true in all other places, in all other times? I do not know.”

Sin also cautioned that “the leaders of the nation . . . (and) of the people must be very careful of how they use people’s power . . . (because) there might be only one small step between people’s power and mob rule.”