Fred Jover
Frank Padilla, one of original founding leaders of the Catholic lay movement known as Couples for Christ (CFC) in Manila in 1981 and currently Servant-General of the Couples for Christ Foundations for Family and Life (CFC-FFL) visited Melbourne recently to meet with members. He also launched a new evangelization movement called “Live Christ, Share Christ (LCSC).
CFC-FFL is represented in 56 countries around the world with around 150,000 mostly Filipinos who are migrants and Overseas Filipino Workers in the country they live or work.
Padilla has already visited Darwin and Brisbane where some CFC-FFL members have settled. He also visited Sydney where the CFC-FFL community is also rapidly gaining membership. He then went back to Melbourne for more discussions and teachings for the newly-reformed CFC-FFL group in Melbourne and La Trobe Valley/Gippsland, Victoria.
Padilla authored the LCSC movement’s resource handbook to guide its members. It states, “The holy Roman Catholic Church has sounded the call to the New Evangelization. This is an urgent call of the highest importance, given the dire urgency of the times. A tsunami of evil is overwhelming the whole world. The assault on faith, family and life is in full force. When the Lord Jesus returns, will he find faith on earth? While things seem hopeless, and we seem helpless in stemming the onslaught, there is always hope. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. Jesus has already won the victory. As we hurtle to the end of time, we already know how it all ends. In the meantime, the world and the Church suffer. In the meantime, souls will still be lost. We cannot just wait for the return of our victorious Lord, but we must engage, here and now, in the spiritual war that rages.This is the call to the New Evangelization.”
Tito Frank or Brother Frank, as he is often called by members, is admired for his devotion and missionary zeal in evangelising many Filipino Catholics in and out of the country.
Visitors to the CFC-FFL website, http://www.cfcffl.org/home.htm, will find the lay community’s guiding principles and doctrines of evangelisation in accord with the Vatican, where Padilla is a well-recognised Filipino lay community leader from the Papacy of John Paul II to the present Pope Francis. He will be one of the 253 delegates to the forthcoming Vatican Synod on 5-19 October 2015.
For more information on CFC-FFL, you may call Chamie and Winnie Tejada on 0408993482; Boy and Ruby Banaag on 0407714434, Elmer and Jane Bandalan on 0425872301 or email Ric and Rose Mendoza at ricmendozajr@gmail.com.
