Journalixm

What does the recent papal conclave—and our response to it—reveal about the state of Filipino Catholicism today?

“After the Conclave: Notes Toward a Filipino Catholic Future” by the Journalixm Staff with Fay Ballo of Brand Y began as a reflection on Filipino papabili and grew into a wider interrogation of faith, identity, and the evolving character of the Filipino religious imagination.

Prompted in part by fresh data from the HILL ASEAN 2024 study on emerging family models, the piece asks: what kind of Church are we becoming—and what kind do we hope to be?

This feature is part of an ongoing series of collaborations between Journalixm and Brand Y, the strategy and cultural insight arm of IXM Hakuhodo.

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When Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s name began circulating once more in the lead-up to the conclave, a familiar current ran through the Filipino Catholic imagination. There was hope, and pride, and perhaps a flicker of destiny. For many, his potential papacy was more than a symbolic breakthrough; it felt like a culmination: of centuries of fidelity, of global diaspora, of a Church in the periphery ready to take the helm.

That moment has passed. The College of Cardinals has chosen Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, now Pope Leo XIV, as the new Bishop of Rome. Another Filipino prelate, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, affectionately called Bishop Ambo, was also mentioned in pre-conclave coverage as a rising voice of the Global South, but the decision took a different turn.

Read the full feature:

After the Conclave: Notes Toward a Filipino Catholic Future What does the recent papal conclave—and our response to it—reveal about the state of Filipino Catholicism today?

Last April 24, IXM Hakuhodo Head of Copy and Journalixm Editor-in-Chief Mikael de Lara Co spoke the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA) General Membership Meeting on storytelling, attentiveness, and Seikatsusha: the whole human behind every audience.

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I'd like to start off with some candor here, because I just now realized: My literary and political communications credentials, slightly an overkill in the introduction, obscures the fact that I am relatively (actually very) young in this industry. So to be given this honor just barely a year after coming on board at IXM is something that I'm truly grateful for. I'm grateful to Third Domingo, our Chair at IXM Hakuhodo, who recommended that I talk, and to PANA of course, Sir Bobby and Ken and the team, for, I suppose, taking Third's word for it. I can only hope to do your graciousness some justice.

That said, despite my rookie status in the industry, I've spent many, many years as a student of language, of philosophy, of the philosophy of language and storytelling and feeling. And that's the lens with which I'm going to approach our talk today. Hopefully there's something to be learned here; hopefully it can be a welcome interruption from the usual lens we use in the industry to talk about storytelling.

I say this because my main problematique today is not to prove that storytelling works, or to shed further light on its importance. I'd like to talk, or at least begin, actually, about the why of it. Why do stories move us? What is it that happens inside us when we see a powerful story unfold? Suffice it to say that this is not a how-to guide; it's more of an excavation of the nature of the story, and why they move us so.

I like to structure these kinds of talks around a series of assertions. I have ten such assertions today. The first being: We are human.

I understand how it might seem as if this is a truth that does not need saying. But I say it not out of gratuitousness, but to interrogate what makes us human at all. Two and a half millennia ago, the ancient Greeks posited that what makes us human is our ability to reflect, which is to take stock of our own narrative; to understand that we are beings in this world; to be self-aware of the context that surrounds us. Now some might argue that there are animals that can exhibit a rudimentary form of such. But I think we all understand that largely, it's this capacity for reflection, the capacity to view ourselves as situated within a context, both spatially and temporally, that's allowed humanity to progress, form societies, and dream forward.

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Read it here: https://journalixm.com/2025/04/30/seikatsusha-as-attentiveness-as-story/

While waiting for maintenance to arrive, Charles practices patience by writing about impatience.

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As I start this essay, the maintenance people are an hour late. The motor on my AC broke down and we’re in the middle of a heat wave and I’m in the middle of losing my mind because the maintenance people are an hour late. I really needed to get out of the house tonight.

Do you know that marshmallow test? Kid in an empty room–if they eat the marshmallow nothing happens, if they wait a couple minutes they get a second marshmallow. Results show that the kids who waited went on to become more successful in life.

Read It here: https://journalixm.com/2025/03/14/why-cant-gen-z-just-be-patient/

In this tumultuous time, we need to separate the signal from the noise. Today, Journalixm is throwing back to our political series from 2024.

Read it here:

Campaigning Uphill Today, we introduce Signal from the Noise, a new series on electoral communications. Our first contributor is Barry Gutierrez— human rights lawyer, communications professional, former Congressman, …