VATICAN CITY (UCAN) -- When Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo met June 4 with Pope Benedict XVI and then his senior advisors, they gave particular attention to human rights and democracy, the Vatican says.

Arroyo's private audience with the pope lasted a brief 10 minutes, after which she held talks with Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Dominique Mamberti.

"During the conversations," the Vatican reported later, they "focused on the political and social situation in Southeast Asia and, in particular, on the respect and promotion of human rights and democratic institutions in that region."

The press statement said they also spoke about "the cordial relations between the Holy See and the Republic of the Philippines" and "the understanding and cooperation existing between Church and State."

Before the audience, Ambassador Marciano Paynor Jr., Philippine consul general in Los Angeles, the United States, and chief of presidential protocol, told Filipino journalists traveling with Arroyo that she would brief the pope on the state of the economy and the recent election. She also would speak about "some of our problems, including the so-called extrajudicial executions," he added. She would also explain "what we are doing about it, what she has said before for the police to investigate and stop the killings," and that communist rebels carried out some of the killings.

The issue of killings with political overtones is a major concern to the Church in the Philippines and was raised publicly by Archbishop Fernando Filoni, apostolic nuncio to the Philippines, in a July 2006 talk at the University of Asia and the Pacific in Pasig City, east of Manila.

A press release issued by the media office of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines reported that the nuncio "raised concerns about mounting violence especially on activists and journalists, and urged government leaders to bring to justice all the perpetrators."

Citing reports from human rights that at least 700 people had been killed since Arroyo took office in 2001, the release said Archbishop Filoni described the number of killings as alarming despite the abolition of the death-penalty law. It quoted him as saying he was "surprised" by the "high incidence of a moral and political violence against those who profess different political ideologies" in the country. He hailed Arroyo's decision to junk capital punishment, but said situation raises question on the government's intention.

In June 2006, a month before the nuncio's talk, Arroyo visited Pope Benedict and presented him, as a gift, the newly signed law abolishing the country's death penalty.

Apart from the killings and other topics mentioned by Paynor, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo told Filipino reporters prior to the papal audience that the president would invite the Holy Father to visit the Philippines "if not this year, then next."

One reason the private audience and subsequent 20-minute public session were kept short was because Pope Benedict was scheduled to receive President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa of Mexico immediately after the Philippine leader.

The Mexican leader had come, on his way to the G8 summit, specifically to meet the pope, whereas Arroyo had come to the Vatican primarily to attend the canonization of Saint Marie Eugenie (1817-1898). The French nun founded the Religious of the Assumption, the order that runs the college where Arroyo studied. Furthermore, the inexplicable cure of a Filipino child, the two lobes of whose brain are not united, had been accepted as the miracle required for the canonization. The child, Risa Bondoc, now 12, was present at the ceremony.

"Welcome!" the pope said with outstretched hands as he greeted Arroyo in the antechamber to his private library. "Your Holiness," responded the president, dressed in black with no head covering.

Afterward, during the public session, Arroyo presented Romulo, Paynor, her husband and daughter-in-law, Philippine Ambassador to the Holy See Leonidas Vera and nine other women in her entourage.

The president gave the pope a Santo Nino Dormido (sleeping holy infant) image carved from elephant ivory and a silver waistband. He reciprocated by giving her a large gold medallion of his pontificate in an ivory box. At her request, he also blessed two trays of religious objects for Arroyo and her party.

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