If her “opposition” to her brother is simply an expression of sisterly concern, beyond the recently concluded elections, what will Imee do if helping the Dutertes greatly harms her brother, or her family’s reputation, which she has labored for decades to rehabilitate?

Elections give voters an opportunity every three years to reject non-performing, misbehaving, incompetent, corrupt and other types of bad leaders and replace them with aspirants suitable for the position. Every election presents a chance for improvement, not deterioration of the quality of the leaders we choose.

As a pope of the contemporary world, one issue he will address will be migration, a preferential apostolate of the Catholic Church. Migrants migrate to escape conditions of poverty, religious and political persecution, and wars. Migration is never a crime. What will his papacy do to embrace the humanity of migrants and refugees? As a son of migrants and of Afro-Creole culture, Leo XIV is a groundbreaking pope.