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MANILA, Philippines – Cardinal Jose Advincula, 73, hardly steps into the limelight, either by choice or a twist of fate.
When he formally became the ninth Filipino cardinal on November 28, 2020, Advincula attended the once-in-a-lifetime ceremony with Pope Francis via livestream, sitting in front of a tablet in his residence in Roxas City in Capiz. The COVID-19 pandemic robbed him of the chance to join the Vatican consistory.
When he was installed as the archbishop of Manila on June 24, 2021, the death of former president Benigno Aquino III at the age of 61, which happened on the same day, overshadowed Advincula’s moment again. The celebration at the Manila Cathedral was supposed to make headlines that day, but the Aquino’s death took him out of the news cycle.
To this day, even as he is joining the conclave to elect Pope Francis’ successor, many Catholics continue to ask, “Who is Cardinal Advincula?” It is a far cry from the popularity of his predecessors, Luis Antonio Tagle, Gaudencio Rosales, and Jaime Sin, an Aklan native who happened to be his high school teacher in Latin.
But Advincula, on his own, has also shunned media attention.
Since he became the archbishop of Manila nearly four years ago, in fact, he has never held a press conference or granted an interview with secular media, according to journalists covering the Catholic Church in Manila.
“Cardinal Joe,” as he is fondly called, chooses to work as a silent builder like his namesake, Saint Joseph the Worker, who never spoke a line in the Bible but is known as a responsible father.
‘He listens first’
Born in Dumalag, Capiz, on March 30, 1952, Advincula has been a priest for nearly 50 years.
He is a low-profile yet skilled administrator who served in two dioceses — the Diocese of San Carlos (2001 to 2011) and the Archdiocese of Capiz (2012 to 2021) before Francis moved him to Manila.
A bishop who prefers written statements over impromptu speeches, he is also a canon lawyer who studied at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila and later at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, or the Angelicum, in Rome.
VIRTUAL ATTENDANCE. Cardinal Jose Advincula watches livestream of the consistory at his residence in Roxas City, Capiz, November 28, 2020.Monsignor Regie Pamposa, who closely worked with Advincula in Capiz, said the cardinal “really followed” his episcopal motto — “Audiam” — a Latin word which means “I will listen.”
“Before he makes decisions, he would really consult you,” Pamposa told Rappler on Wednesday, April 30. “He does things not always from the top. It’s from the bottom. He would get reactions before he makes a final decision.”
While decisions are reserved for him as bishop, “he listens first.”
In a tribute to Advincula in 2021, when the cardinal moved to Manila, Pamposa remembered him for creating mission stations across Capiz, a province in central Philippines. These mission stations are makeshift churches that serve far-flung or underserved communities.
Pamposa recalled that under Advincula, the Archdiocese of Capiz built 29 mission stations and doubled the number of its parishes from 35 to 64. The number of adult baptisms in Capiz also increased.
“In many ways, I can say he is really following what Pope Francis initiated,” said Pamposa.
He quickly added, however, that Advincula has been this way “even before Pope Francis,” because the cardinal “was already going to the peripheries” when he was bishop of San Carlos.
“That’s really one thing that Cardinal Joe has imbibed, following in the footsteps of Pope Francis, to be present or to be with people who are far from the Church. People that are in far places, mountains, for example, far barangays, far barrios — Cardinal Joe would go there,” Pamposa said.
He preferred grassroots work over involvement in politics — although he issued a rare statement on November 27, 2024, calling for statesmanship and sobriety as tension heated up between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte.
The cardinal had said, as early as 2021, that he cannot be as vocal as Sin when it comes to politics.
Planner and visionary
On top of serving remote communities, Pamposa said Advincula places special emphasis on forming young priests.
In the Archdiocese of Capiz and even now in the Archdiocese of Manila, he is known for giving young priests a chance to serve in mission stations and parishes, and to study overseas.
“One, then, should not be surprised to accidentally meet a Capizeño priest studying in the famous University of Vienna or another Capizeño priest serving a diocese either in the US mainland, Guam, or England,” Pamposa wrote in his 2021 tribute to Advincula.
In 2021, a young priest from Capiz — Father Brylle Clinton Deocampo — recounted to Rappler how Advincula sent him to study canon law at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, the school of future nuncios in the Catholic Church.
“He knows that the young priests will be the future of the Church,” Pamposa said on Wednesday. “He keeps on telling us, ‘We will soon be gone, and they will take over.’ So he prepares the priests for the future.”
“He is a visionary,” Pamposa told Rappler. “He is a good planner.”
The conclave, which begins on May 7, focuses the world on Advincula and around 132 other cardinals gathered at the Vatican. Each of these cardinal electors, whether or not declared by media as papabile, gets an equal chance to be elected Successor of Saint Peter.
Will the quiet builder from Capiz now have his moment, this time on the most famous balcony of the Catholic world? – Rappler.com
