Tag: December 5, 2014

In 1970, Blessed Paul VI became the first pontiff to visit Southeast Asia, descending to the slums of Tondo, Manila and meeting with the youth at the University of Santo Tomas.

In 1981, Pope St. John Paul II held the first beatification rites outside the Vatican and visited UST to deliver a message to university students. St. John Paul returned in 1995 to lead the 10th World Youth Day celebrations and the International Youth Forum, and again to meet the Thomasian community.

The Varsitarian was there to witness history and echo the Popes’ universal call to holiness.

UST WILL once again open its doors to the Supreme Pontiff as Pope Francis is set for two key activities on campus during his much-awaited visit to the Philippines on Jan. 15 to 19, 2015.

This will be the fourth time that UST will be graced by a papal visit.

The last pontiff to visit the school was Pope St. John Paul II, who did so on Jan. 13, 1995 as part of the World Youth Day celebrations, and on Feb. 18, 1981 when he came to Manila for the beatification of St. Lorenzo Ruiz.

WITH 2016 declared as the Year of the Poor, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) urged the faithful to give priority to the material and spiritual needs of the marginalized.

“We are all told to remember our own poverty and our own hunger for God because if that hunger and thirst is not within us, we will not be able to see the face of God,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas, CBCP President, said in a video message posted on Radio Veritas 846.

According to the 2014 report released by the Philippine Statistics Authority, poverty incidence is estimated at 24.9 percent in the first six months of 2013.

NEW TOOLS, same rules.

New technology may have altered the landscape of journalism, but its goal of informing, educating and stimulating positive change remains.

Such was the primary message conveyed by journalists during the 16th edition of Inkblots, the annual National Campus Journalism fellowship organized by the Varsitarian.

Broadcaster Mike Enriquez of GMA Network sees journalism as "vocation," one that requires commitment.

“It is a calling. Mahirap maging alagad ng media,” Enriquez told some 250 fellows last Dec. 1 at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex (TARC) Auditorium.

Sa pagdiriwang ng mahigit tatlong dekada ng Panitikang Tomasino, ang ika-30 Gawad Ustetika ay nagsisimula nang tumanggap ng mga lahok na akda.

Ang mga kategoryang kabilang ay Poetry/Tula, Fiction/Katha, Essay/Sanaysay, One Act Play/Dulang May Isang Yugto at Maikling Kuwentong Pambata.

Ang kompetisyon ay bukas sa lahat ng mag-aaral ng Unibersidad ng Santo Tomas para sa akademikong taong 2014 - 2015.

Reading the work of a journalist, a copywriter, and a lawyer sure has its own peculiar effect.

Andrea Pasion-Flores’ For Love and Kisses summons the image of a neighborhood of dollhouses each inhabited by porcelain dolls. The book, which one could prejudice as just another collection of slice-of-life fiction is actually a very surprising compilation at that. It is a village, where each story is a house, filled of lifetimes battered with lies, contempt, disbelief, erroneous judgment, blind obedience, and wrongful hope.

The porcelain village

She blooms in the embrace

of the unencumbered cold.

Her radiance

enthralls, enchants, and he

is smitten.

She gets

a little water, a little sun and

she glows,

for a time he is glad.

But the turn of the monsoon

brought different winds,

that summer she wilted away.

"He tries: a little water

a little sun, a little

too late"

For love,

like her,

is only red for a season.

BAGO PA man mauso ang medisina, inhenyeriya at parmasya sa kolehiyo, higit na naging sikat noon ang mga kakaibang kurso at programa sa Unibersidad.

Noong 1931, nagbukas ang Unibersidad ng wee golf course bilang tugon sa patuloy na pagdami ng mga mag-aaral na nahuhumaling at nalilibang sa laro.

Naging patok sa mga Tomasinong atleta ang wee golf maging sa mga ordinaryong mag-aaral. Nagbigay ito ng daan upang magkasama-sama at magkahalubilo ang mga mag-aaral.

Gayunpaman, hindi tuluyang naging isang ganap na kurso sa Unibersidad ang wee golf sapagkat mabilis na naglaho ang interes ng mga Tomasino at agad itong napalitan ng larong tennis.