"I thought it would happen even in my craziest imagination," said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, who described the day he found himself appointed as cardinal.

He spoke with the BBC in his cathedral in Kalocan on the outskirts of Manila, the capital of the Philippines. He left Rome the next day and joined one of the country's three cardinals, who would participate in the selection of the next pope.

“Often, you would expect the Archbishop to be a cardinal, but I’m just a modest bishop in a small diocese, most of whom are slum dwellers, urban poverty, you know.

"But I think, maybe for Pope Francis, we have more cardinals really rooted there."

Cardinal David only started working for five months after a surprise altitude last December. But in some ways, he shapes the late pope in the legacy of his country.

Pope Francis set his own goal, and he put what he believed had lost his common touch and approached the people.

Cardinal David was affectionately summoned by his congregation “Apu Ambo”, which fits well with this mission, and he has been marginalized for the poor throughout his life.

The Philippines has the largest Roman Catholic population in Asia, with nearly 80% of the population accounting for 100 million, making it the third largest in the world.

That's why Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is considered Papabire, or the leader in replacement Pope Francis - Tagle was also known as a contender at the last papal meeting 12 years ago.

The country is considered a highlight of the Roman Catholic Church, where faith is strong and its rituals are woven into the structure of society.

However, the church faces a headwind there. Politicians are challenging their doctrines about divorce and family planning, and the new charismatic church is winning converts.

Pope Francis helped restore morale to the Philippine church, although he did not provide answers to these challenges, not just a welcome to diversity and urged clergy to be more sensitive to the needs of the poor.

But the support of those who are radicals in the church is indeed inspired.

For Cardinal David, his support was crucial in the war of drugs announced by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

He took me to see the plaque he erected in front of the cathedral in honor of Kian Delos Santos, a 17-year-old boy from the parish who was shot dead by police in August 2017.

Keane is just one of the thousands who died in the Duterte campaign, an estimated 6,300 to 30,000. What sets his case apart from most people is that the usual police citation was that he was armed and refused to arrest, which was inconsistent with witnesses and security camera videos.

Police murdered him while defending his life. Eventually, three officers were convicted of murder, the rarest responsibility situation in the drug war.

The Cardinal is still clearly affected by the hundreds of murders that took place in his diocese - the typical low-income community in the area targeted by police in the infamous Tokhang, or "knocking and pleading" to attack alleged drug dealers and users.

Cardinal David said, “There are so many bodies that see the left and right corpses.”

"And you know, when I ask people what they think, you know, why are these people targeting. They say they are drug users. I said, what is that? Who? Who told you, just because people use drugs, should they die?"

He began to provide shelter to those who were worried about being on the police hit list and then drug programs in hopes that it would protect them.

He also did something that the church hadn't done for months: He publicly criticized the drug war for being illegal and immoral.

As a result, he was threatened with many deaths. President Duterte accused him of taking medicine and talked about beheading him. The government also filed charges of incitement against him, although the charges were eventually abandoned.

During those difficult years, Cardinal David found that he had strong supporters in Rome.

When Francis visited the city in 2019, he brought him aside and gave him a special blessing saying he knew what was going on in his parish and urged him to stay safe.

When they met again in 2023, he reminded the pope that he was still alive, he said the pope smiled and told him, "You have not been to mart yet!"

The role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has changed over its 500-year history in the archipelago.

It is with the Spanish friars conquered by Spain and the de facto colonial administrators, and the church becomes a large landowner. In 1898, when the United States replaced Spain as colonial rulers and implemented the separation of the church and the state, the political influence of the Catholic clergy weakened.

But the church retains the loyalty of the majority of the population. Even today, nearly 80% of Filipinos consider Roman Catholic after the invasion of the charismatic Protestant church.

Since independence in 1946, the church has established uneasy relationships with power. Its deep roots and establishment status make it an influential player, attracted by political factions, but also requires their support to protect its interests.

Attitudes began to change from the 1970s and 1980s, when young Pablo David and many other senior church figures today were learning to enter the clergy.

This is the age of “liberal theology”, which comes from Latin America and believes that clergy has a duty to fight the general poverty and injustice around them.

When then-President Marcos, the father of the current Philippine president, declared martial law in 1972 and began to imprison and kill critics, some pastors even joined armed resistance underground.

But the church hierarchy continues to cooperate with what the Marcos dictatorship calls “critical cooperation.”

In February 1986, Cardinal Jaime Sin called on people to come out on the street and oppose Marcos, triggering the famous "People's Power" uprising that caused the president to strike.

Cardinal Crime will re-enact that role in 2001 when helping to overthrow another troubled president, Joseph Estrada.

After that, however, church leaders were accused of comfort with Estrada’s successor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in part to gain political and social pressure against growing political and social pressure to expand legalization of family planning and divorce.

They are reluctant to condemn President Duterte’s war on drugs because despite the shocking human costs, it is still welcomed by the Philippine public, at least away from impoverished areas where the murders occurred.

Nearly 40 years after the critical role in overthrowing the Marcos regime, the influence of the church seems to be weakening again, just like it was a century ago.

For example, the enthusiastic opposition in the church cannot prevent the Philippine Congress from passing the Reproductive Health Act of 2012, which makes family planning easy to access.

Despite the fact that many Filipino Catholics remain conservative on issues such as gender and divorce, he said he wrote extensively on Catholicism in the Philippines. Said Jayeel Cornelio, a sociologist.

He said the church’s failure on family planning showed that it had a reduced impact on national politics.

“The Catholic Church was actually eliminated during President Duterte.

Many Filipinos welcomed this, including Cardinal David.

He said: “Reigning the church is not the business of the church, and the government is not the business of running the church.”

"But we can complement each other - I can't say we will be apolitical. As long as we stick to our role as moral and spiritual leaders, we can provide guidance for political and economic affairs."

However, even with a more limited view of the correct role of the church, it fell into opposition.

Thirteen years after overcoming church opposition to the Reproductive Health Act, the Philippines Congress is now trying to pass a bill that would legalize divorces, and the church disagrees with it.

"I don't want them to change their official doctrine, but in my work as a member of parliament, I try to solve the problems facing Filipinos, and I don't want them to intervene in my work. Our constitution violates legislation to support any religion," said Geraldine Roman, the first transgender person in the Philippines.

She is a Catholic who believes Pope Francis has created a more enthusiastic environment for LGBTQ+ for LGBTQ+.

“No one misleads me in my church right now,” she said.

But she opposed the Catholic church lobbying against the divorce bill, which she believes will free thousands of Filipino women into abusive marriages.

"The church is free to try to instill Catholics in marriage to stick with it. But in the end, it was the decision of the couple, and even the church could not interfere with it."

Other challenges include increasingly disengaged congregations. Although the number of Roman Catholics has only slightly declined over the past three decades, the number of people attending Mass at least once a week has dropped by half, while more than one-third have been surveyed recently.

Then there are all kinds of scandals related to the Catholic Church, especially sexual abuse of minors, critics say Pope Francis, while it did solve the problem, there were not enough problems to solve it.

Cardinal David recalls how President Duterte “loved to wield” a book called “Secret Altar,” the alleged scandal in the Philippine church exposed, and how he would say, “Oh, those hypocrites. Don’t listen to them. They don’t practice their preaching. They are abusers. They are abusers. I must say some people are in trouble.

But, he added, defense is not the way the church can earn its credibility.

"It should be humble. As Pope Francis suggests, dare to be vulnerable. Dare to be criticized. Try not to stay on the pedestal where people cannot reach your place and show your humanity.