Cardinal Tagle leads Mass at a chapel in Rome after Pope Francis's funeral. Screenshot from Pontificio Collegio Filippino livestream

MANILA — Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle on Sunday morning led a Mass at a chapel in Rome, a day after Pope Francis was laid to rest at the Santa Maria Maggiore basilica.

Tagle, who has been based in the Vatican since 2019, presided over the Mass at the chapel of the Pontificio Collegio Filippino, said to be the "home in Rome" of Filipino secular diocesan priests sent by bishops to Rome for ongoing priestly formation.

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In his homily, Tagle talked about the mercy of Jesus Christ as Catholics observed the second Sunday of Easter, which he said the late Pope John Paul II named as the Sunday of Divine Mercy.

"We need to praise the Lord, for mercy has become eternal in the risen Lord. We know that mercy will not be defeated by the evil present in the world," he said.

"But we have to believe in it and we have to act on it. Very often, we do the reverse: we see a lot of the negative things but very few proclaim the little good things that are happening," added Tagle, the pro-prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization.

"And so evil prevails because we spread the bad news and very few talk about good news."

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There is no clear frontrunner to succeed Pope Francis, although British bookmakers have singled out Tagle, a reformer from the Philippines and a former archbishop of Manila, and Pietro Parolin, from Italy, as early favorites. —with Reuters

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