“Hindi ba kami nasisiraan ng bait? Matagal na,” jokes Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines media director Monsignor Pedro Quitorio. The job title seems to be his fate, having assumed the position three times since 2006. As media director, he is the editor in chief of CBCPnews.com, four newspapers, one magazine and the multimedia and production media of CBCP.
The only priest in a team of 18, Msgr Quitorio says they’ve been preparing for Pope Francis’ January visit since December 2013. “There was a cardinal from Vatican City who visited in December last year, and he said, ‘The Holy Father might come.’ When he said that, sabi namin, wala naming masama if we start preparing,” says Msgr Quitorio, who knows all too well the local editorial term “embargo.”
They started working on Papalvisit.ph, a dedicated website solely for the much-awaited 2015 visit, in December. “We started documenting Tacloban already, took photos, made videos, interviewed survivors,” says Msgr Quitorio. It was formally launched in July. “But CBCPnews.com will continue to carry the news about it. They’re two different websites pero same people ang humahawak sa kanila.”
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Both sites are run from the third floor of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines headquarters on General Luna Street in Intramuros. On the Monday afternoon that Coconuts Manila visited, the vibe was steady and sleepy. Perhaps it was merienda time, or the calm before the storm — there’s two more months before Pope Francis’ four-day visit in January.
The big shebang is a big deal not just for this Catholic news organization that had 65,000 site visits in September, acording to Similar Web, but even more so for local and international mainstream media. The last time a Pope visited the Philippines was in 1995 when John Paul II presided over World Youth Day.
“We’ve always been busy and of course, it will be busier. We will be dealing with a lot of media, both local and international. So we’ve been creating committees, holding brainstorming meetings, we’re also writing a media book to guide us, the catholic media, about how to conduct ourselves,” says Msgr Quitorio.
“We are just giving that extra push for the papal visit,” Nirva’ana dela Cruz, CBCPnews.com associate editor. “We’re coming up with stories and photos — bishops’ messages, young people’s people and prayers. No change in structure, just more work for all of us.”
Multitasking is something both Nirva and Monsi, as she likes to call her boss, Msgr Quitorio, like to say often. “We are part of the committee in charge of media and media accreditation, which is over and above our special coverage,” says the 32-year-old lay-person.
Of the 18 staffers in the media office, five, all journalism graduates, are specifically assigned to CBCP news. They also enlist the help of four active contributing writers.
Apart from the website and the media accreditation, they are also tasked to deliver a special supplement for the CBCP Monitor from November to all the way to January, “as well as a special issue of Impact magazine.” Needless to say these will require hours of meetings and preps for “a marathon of work in the months ahead. We’re multi-tasking so bad it seems like it’s an undiscovered path to holiness,” admits Nirva.
Of course, and with a Pope so popular in social media circles, that, too, has become a major little thing. “We’re slowly mastering how best to use social media to highlight our strengths as a media organization,” says Nirva. All 18 staffers, including Monsi, are well-versed with Facebook, Twitter, Instgram, and hey, even Pinterest. There are a few guidelines, but over all, “it’s just common sense,” says Quitorio confidently. And for an aside: articles about the Blessed Virgin Mary are the ones that get the most shares, consistently.
Of all the work however, it’s the “warding off of people” is what they dread the most. “Truth to tell, I may not even see the Pope’s skullcap live because I will be buried in a laptop writing and editing stories the entire time! How do I explain that?”
With more work laid out for them, how do they relax? Does happy hour come early for you, we ask Nirva. “I go to the Blessed Sacrament,” she jokes back. “No, but seriously, it’s my sanity. Like a regular person, I used to hit the gym twice a week, which is petering out for unknown reasons. I read, meet my friends, the usual. The boys of the office come together and insult each other over beer every Friday, I gather.”
It’s not much different from a regular newsroom, where tensions run high, and then run higher come deadline time. Except, it is a Catholic newsroom. “You’re that crazy brave voice in the desert saying, ‘Jesus is good! He loves us all to distraction! C’mon people, are you listening? Hello,” Nirva tries to explain.
She admits a non-religious person can probably hold a job like hers, but “they wouldn’t last long, nor would they enjoy it.” It’s almost like a calling, or to use a secular term — an advocacy. “A lot of times, it’s a thankless job,” Nirva says, “but we’re a bunch of characters who know that we’re at CBCP news precisely because God has chosen us to be there.”
In a world constantly and exponentially changing, that belief, and the mounting deadlines, remains constant. Like death and taxes. It’s the axis by which their jobs spin around. And when the Pope has come and gone, it will continue to be the axis by which their lives spin around.
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