MANILA (Agencies): Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, has recovered from his brush with the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), according to Catholic officials in the Philippines and Rome, UCAN reported.
“We are happy to announce that Cardinal Tagle is now free from Covid-19 as was confirmed by swab test results,” Archdiocese of Manila said in a statement on September 23.
The Collegio Pontificio Filippino, a college for diocesan priests from the Philippines studying at pontifical universities in Rome, also confirmed that the former archbishop of Manila had recovered.
“It is with great joy that we announce to the Filipino people and to the world that our dear Cardinal (Tagle) is now free from coronavirus,” Father Gregory Gaston, the college rector, said.
Cardinal Tagle tested positive for the coronavirus upon returning to the Philippines on September 10 to visit his elderly parents. He self-quarantined in a hotel in Manila upon learning the test results.
CNS reported that after two weeks in quarantine and testing negative for Covid-19, Cardinal Tagle said he had experienced firsthand the importance of feeling connected to God, to others and to creation.
“Your existence depends on a rediscovery of the reality that you are not alone, you are always connected,” he said on September 25, in an online keynote address to the congress of the Philippines’ Catholic education association.
It was a time of “fear” and “anxieties,” he said, although he was asymptomatic the entire time.
“But getting out of the quarantine, I realised that, really, for you to survive, you need a deep, deep sense of interconnectedness,” he said. “Your enemy will be that you are isolated, that you are a threat now” to the health of others.
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Cardinal Tagle said he is grateful “to the many, many people” who sent him messages and offered prayers for him.
Bishop Arturo Bastes, the retired bishop of Sorsogon, was reported by UCAN as saying, “The people of God are so happy (Cardinal Tagle) is now Covid free. God wants him to continue his mission in the Philippines and in the world. He is very active in the ministry and has been visiting many places including refugee camps.”
