Glyzelle Palomar, 12, looks at one of the rosaries Pope Francis gave her after she delivered a speech before him and thousands of youths at the University of Santo Tomas on January 18. Photo by Ryan Chua, ABS-CBN News

12-year-old victim of physical abuse hugged by Pope Francis after emotional speech

MANILA - For several days, she rehearsed the short speech she herself wrote, making sure it would come out perfectly during the big event. She will, after all, be speaking to the leader of her faith.

But just as 12-year-old Glyzelle Palomar was delivering the last line of her message to Pope Francis before thousands of youths on Sunday, she broke into tears.

"It was sudden," she told journalists after the Pope's encounter with the youth at the University of Santo Tomas. "I felt my throat ache and my tears just fell."

Palomar, who suffered physical abuse from her mother and is now under the care of the charity Tulay ng Kabataan, was among four people who delivered testimonies before the visiting pontiff in the well-attended program.

Palomar told Pope Francis of how some parents have neglected their children, and how those children have become victims of prostitution and drug addiction.

"Why is God allowing such things to happen," she said, her voice breaking and tears falling midway through the sentence, "even if it is not the fault of the children?"

After her speech, Pope Francis hugged Palomar and 14-year-old Jun Chura, a former street dweller who also delivered a message. The Pope also gave them rosaries.

"I'm very happy," Palomar said of her close encounter with the Pope. "He's like God."

"I also felt he was like my father. I no longer have a father," added Palomar, whose father died when she was younger.

Pope Francis drew points from Palomar's testimony in his message to the crowd of over 24,000 young people, doing away with his prepared speech.

Speaking in Spanish, Francis praised Palomar for having the courage to cry and urged Catholics to do the same.

"Today's world has a great lack of capacity of knowing how to cry," he said. "Let us learn how to weep as she has shown us today."

The Pope, the head of over 1 billion Catholics all over the world, said he had no answers to Palomar's question. But he underscored the role of crying in showing compassion, one of the themes of his apostolic and state visit.

"The great question of why so many children suffer, she did this crying," Pope Francis said, still referring to Palomar. "The response that we can make today is, let us learn how to weep, how to cry.

"If you don't learn how to cry, you can't be good Christians."

As in his previous speeches, Pope Francis put helping the poor at the core of his message to the youth.

The Argentinean pope is widely praised for his emphasis on helping the poor even before he assumed the papacy. When he was elected pontiff, he named himself after Francis of Assisi, a saint known for living a life of poverty.

"Do you think with the poor, do you feel with the poor, do you do something for the poor?" he said towards the end of his message to young Catholics in the Philippines, where poverty remains widespread despite recent economic gains.