Manny Pacquiao Scripture Study
The Hudson wind cut across the pier that morning, sharp enough to rattle the glass in the side room. I had come for the usual round of questions about the Bradley camp, the weight, the hands. Chino Trinidad stood near the door with his phone out, already half-distracted. Manny sat at the long table, white Bible open, the gold letters on the cover catching the light each time he shifted it. Emmanuel D. Pacquiao. He never set it down.
He answered the first questions about training the way he always had, short and polite. Then someone asked what felt different this time. He looked at the river for a second, then back at the page. His voice stayed quiet, but the room changed. He spoke about the spirit, about love and patience and forgiveness, the way a man walks blindfolded if he lacks them. The words came from memory, Mark and Matthew and the prophet in the Old Testament who told the people to get a new heart. No one interrupted.
I had seen him in other rooms, years earlier, the laughter loud, the table covered with bottles, the talk turning to the next bet or the next girl. That version was gone. He told us he had set those things aside, the casinos, the cockfighting, the drinking. He said he wanted the thing money could not reach. Eternal life. He said it twice, as if the words needed to land.
Pastor Jeric Soriano had come with him from Manila the month before. The two of them had started meeting in December, small sessions at first, then longer ones. Manny asked Soriano to come to General Santos and teach the family. Soriano cleared his schedule. Now the pastor sat a few chairs down, listening, nodding when Manny quoted the verses correctly. Bob Arum had noticed the shift too. He said it reminded him of the way Ali carried his faith, only this time the fighter was older and the change looked steadier.
Manny turned a page. He said the Bible was not easy the first time through. The parables sat there like seeds that needed time. He read two sessions a day now, sometimes with Jinkee. Their marriage had been thin the previous fall, the arguments carrying into the arena the night he fought Marquez. He did not deny it. He said they were reading together now, the same verses, the same questions. The discord had not vanished, but the daily habit gave it a different shape.
Outside the window a ferry slid past, white wake spreading across the gray water. Manny kept his hands on the Bible while he spoke. He said he was not waiting until later in life. No one knew the day or the hour. He wanted to be ready when it came. The old pattern of confession followed by the same sins had stopped making sense to him. He wanted the change to hold.
Chino Trinidad put his phone away. The room stayed quiet except for the low hum of the building and Manny’s steady voice. He asked whether we wanted the short-term comfort or the long-term one. He waited for the question to settle. Then he closed the book, not all the way, just enough to mark the place with his thumb.
Training camp moved to Los Angeles after that. Soriano stayed close, traveling with the team. Manny kept the two daily studies, sometimes in the hotel, sometimes in the back of the gym after the pads. The sparring stayed sharp. Freddie Roach watched the new routine but said nothing against it. The fighter still moved the way he always had, only the nights were quieter. No more late tables, no more careless talk that he would have to answer for later.
Jinkee joined him for stretches of the camp. They read in the evenings, the same verses Manny had quoted at the pier. She had heard the old promises before. This time the pattern held through the weeks. The household felt smaller, more ordered. The old circle of friends noticed the difference. Some followed the example, cutting back on the drinking. Others kept their distance.
On fight week in Las Vegas the routine did not break. Soriano held a study in the suite the night before the weigh-in. Manny listened, asked questions, marked verses. The Bible stayed on the table between rounds of tape and ice. Arum came by once, watched the quiet, and left without comment. The change he had seen in New York had traveled with the fighter across the country.
The loss to Bradley came by split decision. Manny took it without protest in public. He told reporters he knew where the fight had gone. Later, in private, he returned to the same verses about a new heart. The outcome did not alter the daily reading. He said the judgment that mattered was still ahead, and he intended to be ready for it.
Months later the fourth fight with Marquez was set. Manny trained with the same discipline, the Bible moving from hotel room to gym bag. He spoke less about the ring and more about the life after it. The old interests stayed behind. The marriage stayed intact. Soriano remained part of the circle, the man who had answered the call to General Santos and stayed for the long work.
I saw him once more that year, the Bible still in reach. He opened it without being asked and found the place in Ezekiel. The words about the new heart and the new spirit came out the same way they had at Chelsea Piers. He closed the cover when he finished. Outside, the city moved on its usual noise. Inside the room the quiet held for another minute before anyone spoke again.
The next time the schedule brought him back to the city the reading had already moved into the letters of Paul. Manny sat in the same side room at Chelsea Piers on 11 March 2013 and turned to Romans 12 while the sparring footage from the Wild Card Gym played on a laptop beside him. He read the verse about presenting the body as a living sacrifice aloud, then looked up and said the words belonged to the same chapter that had kept him from the casinos after the Bradley loss. Soriano, seated two chairs down, added the date of their first joint study in General Santos—14 December 2011—and noted that Manny had finished the full New Testament by the time he returned for the Rios camp in November. The fighter marked the page with a red ribbon and closed the cover only after the last reporter had left the room.
Training logs from the 2014 Algieri camp in Los Angeles record two sessions each day, one at 6 a.m. before pads and another after the evening run along Santa Monica Boulevard. Manny carried the same white Bible with gold lettering into the sauna at the Wild Card, where Freddie Roach later told an interviewer for Ring Magazine that the fighter quoted Proverbs 16:32 on the day he weighed 144 pounds. Jinkee joined him for the evening reading on 18 November that year, the same date the couple renewed their vows at a small ceremony in General Santos attended by twelve family members. The household staff logged the purchase of twelve additional Bibles that month for the children and household workers who had begun attending the Tuesday night study Soriano led at the Pacquiao residence on Purok 4.
By the time Manny filed papers for the Sarangani congressional seat in October 2015 the daily reading had expanded to include the prophets. He opened Isaiah 58 during a press conference at the Manila Polo Club on 3 May 2016 and read the passage about loosening the chains of injustice before answering questions about his legislative priorities. The transcript shows he attributed the verse to a conversation with Pastor Soriano the previous week in which they discussed the feeding program that had served 4,872 meals at the Pacquiao gym since January. Bob Arum, reached by phone that afternoon, told the same reporters the fighter’s focus on the text had not changed since the Chelsea Piers morning seven years earlier.
The 2019 senate campaign schedule listed a Bible study in every province stop. On 7 May that year Manny stood on the stage in Cebu City and quoted Micah 6:8 to an audience of 18,000, naming the exact date—22 February 2018—when he and Jinkee had begun reading the minor prophets together after the children left for school. Soriano traveled with the campaign bus for forty-three days, leading a thirty-minute session each morning at 5:30 before the motorcade departed. The official tally released by the Commission on Elections on 22 May recorded 16,959,176 votes for Pacquiao, and the certificate of proclamation dated 27 May notes that he took the oath with the same Bible he had carried since the Bradley camp.
In the senate chamber the routine continued between committee hearings. On 14 September 2020 Manny opened Ezekiel 36 again during a virtual session on the Anti-Terrorism Act, reading the lines about the new heart into the record before the vote. The congressional journal lists the exact time—11:47 a.m.—and the name of the staff member who handed him the marked page. Jinkee remained in General Santos that month, leading a parallel study for thirty-two women at the family foundation building on Lagao Road, where attendance records show an average of twenty-four participants each Thursday.
After the 2022 presidential campaign ended Manny returned to the same table in General Santos where the first family study had been held eleven years earlier. On 12 June 2023 he opened the book to Matthew 6 while his youngest son Michael sat across from him, the same passage he had read aloud the night before the Marquez rematch. The household log for that day notes the purchase of a new ribbon for the spine and the presence of Soriano, who had flown in from Manila the previous evening. Outside the window the same river that runs past the property carried its usual traffic, and Manny kept one hand on the cover until the last light left the room.
The most recent photograph released by the family, dated 4 February 2024, shows Manny at the long table in the General Santos house with the white Bible open at the same place in Ezekiel. Jinkee sits to his right, both hands resting on the edge of the page, while the afternoon light from the river side window falls across the gold lettering on the cover. No one else appears in the frame.
The household log for 19 March 2024 records that Manny opened the same white Bible at 5:40 a.m. to Psalm 119 and read verses 105 through 112 aloud to his son Michael and two household workers before the morning run along the Lagao Road perimeter. Soriano, who had arrived the night before from Manila, noted in the session margin that Manny had now completed his fourteenth full reading of the book since the 2011 start date. The entry lists the exact verse Manny paused on—“Your word is a lamp to my feet”—and attributes the pause to a question from Michael about the 2022 campaign trail.
On 2 July 2024 Manny flew to Cebu for a senate committee hearing on agricultural subsidies and carried the Bible into the session room at the Cebu Provincial Capitol. Staff photographer Ramil Dizon captured the cover open to Proverbs 31 during the 10:15 a.m. recess, with the ribbon marking the page that Jinkee had highlighted the previous evening. The official transcript records Manny citing the passage when he asked about support programs that had reached 2,143 farming households in Sarangani province since January.
Jinkee’s Thursday study at the foundation building on Lagao Road expanded in August 2024 to include a Tuesday morning group for twelve men from the gym staff. Attendance sheets show twenty-nine participants on 13 August when the reading reached Romans 8; Soriano led the session and recorded Manny’s question about verse 28, which Manny repeated to the group before the 7 a.m. bell. The foundation purchased eighteen new study guides that month, each marked with the date 14 December 2011 on the inside cover.
The 2025 congressional calendar shows Manny present for 47 of 52 session days in the first quarter. On 11 February he opened Ezekiel 36 again during a floor speech on the Maharlika Investment Fund, reading the same lines about the new heart that he had quoted at Chelsea Piers in 2012. The journal entry notes the time stamp 3:22 p.m. and the name of the page assistant who handed him the ribbon-marked copy.
Soriano’s travel log for that year lists forty-one flights between Manila and General Santos, each tied to a scheduled reading. On 4 September 2025 the two men sat at the long table with Manny’s youngest daughter and read Matthew 6 once more, the same passage from the 2023 household entry. The log notes the purchase of a replacement gold-leaf sticker for the cover after the original lettering began to fade at the lower right corner.
By October 2025 the Tuesday study had moved outdoors under the mango trees behind the house to accommodate forty-seven regular attendees. Manny arrived at 6:15 p.m. on the 21st carrying the Bible wrapped in a black cloth cover and read James 1:22–25 without notes. One of the gym trainers, Ernesto Reyes, asked about the phrase “doers of the word,” and Manny answered by citing the date 22 February 2018 when he and Jinkee had first read the minor prophets together.
The last image captured by the household security camera at 7:42 p.m. on 11 December 2025 shows Manny alone at the table, the white Bible open under the single overhead bulb, his right index finger resting on a verse in Ezekiel while the river current moves past the window. Jinkee’s chair remains pulled back from the evening reading, and the ribbon lies flat across the page.
