As the Vatican commences its Papal Conclave in Rome, a test of the Catholic Church’s moral and political influence is underway in the Philippines.

Catholicism has been the predominant religion of the Philippines since the 1500s and it has the third largest number of Catholic citizens in the world, a legacy of the country’s Spanish colonial history. But church critics here say that now is the time to put the nation’s devout Catholic past behind them and move toward a more secular state.

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