09365
May 4, 2009

Filipino boxing champ has Christian message, say church leaders

by Maurice Malanes
Ecumenical News International

MANILA — Filipino Manny Pacquiao, who has become the world’s welterweight boxing champion after knocking out Britain’s Ricky Hatton in Las Vegas, is also an evangelical Christian messenger to the world, say Philippine church leaders.

“Pacquiao has always displayed a dependence on God in all his fights, which is a good Christian quality that has made our champion humble and gentle despite his success,” the Rev. Simplicio Dang-awan Jr of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) told Ecumenical News International. The UCCP is a partner church of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

In just five minutes and 59 seconds on May 2, Pacquiao won the International Boxing Organization’s light welterweight crown after a left hook that landed on Hatton’s jaw and put the “hitter from Manchester” flat on his back for several minutes.

Sportswriters describe Pacquiao as a reserved and unassuming person outside the ring, who gets transformed into an electrifying machine during a fight.
 
Roman Catholic Bishop Carlito Cenzon of Baguiod described rosary-donning Pacquiao’s practice of going to a corner of the boxing ring to pray before and after a fight as offering an “evangelical,” or Christian, message.

The bishop said he appreciates the way in which Pacquiao and his mother have included prayer as part of their lives. He noted that Pacquiao’s team would always invite a priest to say Mass shortly before a boxing bout, and that his mother remains in a room to pray while her son goes into the ring.

It was Pacquiao’s fifth world title in as many divisions, a feat which enshrined him as the only boxer who fought in four weight classes in four successive fights and won them all.

Despite his victories, Pacquiao had never bad-mouthed his opponents, the UCCP’s Dang-awan noted. The boxer’s total trust and dependence on God spelled the difference during his fight with Hatton, for which the Filipino champion had trained hard, said Dang-awan.

“When one depends on God, he grants what one asks for because he promised not to forsake those who trust in him,” asserted the Protestant leader.

Still, Catholic Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen said of Pacquiao’s religiosity, “He prays and wears the rosary but that is just a gesture of his personal devotion to God and does not necessarily have an evangelical significance. Some of his opponents also do the same.”