Manny Pacquiao Studies Scripture

The lights along the Hudson flickered low through the windows as the session stretched past midnight. I had come for the usual pre-fight questions, notebook open, recorder ready, but the room had filled instead with open Bibles and the low sound of voices turning pages. Manny sat at the center table, his engraved white copy never more than an arm’s length away, finger tracing verses he had already marked. Pastor Soriano leaned forward, explaining a parable from Matthew while the rest of us listened.

I had watched Manny’s circle for years. The late nights after training used to run until the sun came up, pool tables crowded, cards scattered, bottles passed around. The schedule stayed brutal, yet the distractions multiplied. After the third fight with Marquez the strain showed in every face. Jinkee had nearly stayed home that night in Las Vegas. When she finally stepped into the suite, the delay left Freddie Roach with barely fifteen minutes to loosen Manny’s shoulders before the walk to the ring. The performance that followed told its own story.

Soriano had entered the picture the previous December in Manila. A single study at the house turned into another the next week, then an urgent call to General Santos City. Soriano cleared five days on his calendar and flew south. By the third visit the trust had settled enough that Manny asked him to teach the same lessons to the extended family. The pastor, twenty-two years into the work, recognized the hunger. He had seen it in his own life after the car crash that killed his friends when he was nineteen. The empty seat that night had kept him on the curb. A Bible given later finally made sense only after he accepted what the giver called a living spirit.

In Los Angeles the pattern held. Training finished, the group moved to a rented house where the Bible studies replaced the old routines. Manny set the music equipment aside. The basketball court stayed empty. He read two sessions a day, sometimes more, and brought Jinkee into the circle. The verses on self-control and faithfulness were spoken aloud, not argued over. The same man who once needed seven-figure advances from Bob Arum to cover gambling markers now spoke of long-term investment in something he called eternal life.

I sat through one of those evenings in a quiet corner of the living room. Soriano read from Mark while Manny followed along, repeating the lines under his breath until the phrasing felt natural. No one raised their voice. When the study ended, Manny stayed at the table, underlining passages with a ballpoint pen. Outside, the city kept its usual noise, but the room held only the sound of pages turning and the occasional question about obedience.

The change reached the gym as well. Freddie Roach noticed the difference in focus during mitt work. The old restlessness that had once pulled Manny toward casinos or late-night drives had given way to early returns and quiet meals. Jinkee traveled with the camp now without hesitation. She read alongside him in the evenings, their copies side by side on the kitchen counter. The marital distance that had nearly ended the marriage after the Marquez fight narrowed with each shared study.

Bob Arum watched from the promoter’s side and said little at first. Then, one afternoon before a press event, he mentioned the shift reminded him of another fighter’s turn, though the circumstances differed. Manny was older, already carrying the weight of eight divisions and a congressional seat. The peace he described came from the daily reading rather than any sudden vision. Soriano stayed close, traveling from Manila to Los Angeles to Las Vegas, adjusting his own schedule each time Manny called.

By the week of the Bradley fight the routine had become fixed. Morning training, afternoon rest, evening study. Manny quoted from memory during interviews, moving from Josiah to Matthew without notes. The old habits, the womanizing, the drinking, the careless speech, had stopped. He said the Bible served as the manual he had been missing. The fear of being alone that once drove the nightlife no longer pulled at him. Instead he spoke of readiness for a day he could not schedule.

The MGM Grand Garden Arena filled on fight night. The entourage remained large, the schedule tight, yet the center of it had narrowed to the ring and the book that traveled with him. Soriano stood in the corner section reserved for the camp. Jinkee watched from the suite level. Manny entered with the same measured steps, but the expression on his face carried none of the earlier distraction. After the final bell he returned to the same table, the same Bible, the same verses.

The years that followed kept the pattern. Bible studies continued between training camps and legislative sessions. The cockfighting interests and casino visits stayed in the past. Manny and Jinkee read together when the schedule allowed. The pastor who had rearranged his life for five days in General Santos remained part of the inner circle. The fighter who once measured success in titles now measured it in the daily turning of pages.

On the morning after the Bradley decision in Las Vegas on June 9 2012 Manny sat in the same rented house on Dean Martin Drive and opened the white Bible to Proverbs 16 verse 32 marking the line about ruling one’s spirit with a yellow highlighter while Soriano noted the verse number in a small ledger he kept for follow-up calls. The camp moved to General Santos City the next week where Manny scheduled two separate sessions one at the family compound on the outskirts and another at the local Members Church of God International branch on National Highway drawing thirty-seven relatives and staff members each evening for the next ten days. Jinkee read aloud from Ephesians 5 verses 22 through 25 on those nights and Manny repeated the passage about wives and husbands the following morning during a radio interview on DXMD station before boarding the flight back to Los Angeles.

Freddie Roach adjusted the mitt schedule in 2013 so that Manny finished at four in the afternoon instead of six allowing time for an additional study at the Wild Card Gym office where Soriano joined by video link from Manila on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Manny quoted 1 Corinthians 9 verse 27 during the March 2013 Rios fight week in Macau telling reporters the body must be kept under control and later that month he signed paperwork ending his stake in two cockfighting arenas in Davao del Sur. Bob Arum recorded a short note in his office calendar on September 12 2013 after a phone call in which Manny declined a proposed exhibition bout because the date overlapped with a planned family reading of the book of James at the Sarangani provincial capitol.

The 2014 rematch with Bradley in Las Vegas on April 12 drew the same corner team yet the post-fight meal at the MGM suite consisted of water and printed copies of Psalms 1 through 5 rather than the earlier spread of room-service plates. Manny entered Congress in Quezon City the following Monday and placed the Bible on his desk during the session that addressed House Bill 3738 on overseas workers. Soriano flew in for three days that July and the two men met at the Peninsula Manila hotel where Manny underlined Galatians 5 verse 23 in front of two legislative aides who later joined the weekly calls.

By 2016 the Senate campaign stops included a stop at the church in General Santos where Manny addressed 1 400 attendees on the topic of 2 Timothy 2 verse 15 and the need to study scripture rightly. He won the seat with 16.6 million votes and moved the family reading sessions to a rented apartment near the Senate building in Pasay City keeping the same white Bible whose spine had been reinforced with clear packing tape after the 2014 trip to Japan for the Horn fight. Jinkee and their four children took turns reading verses aloud each Sunday evening with Manny correcting pronunciation on the longer names in the Old Testament genealogies.

Soriano continued the long-distance sessions until early 2021 when health limited travel and the final in-person meeting occurred on January 28 at the Pacquiao residence in Forbes Park Manila with Manny recording the discussion on his phone for later review. After Soriano’s passing Manny continued the pattern alone in the same room using a digital recording of earlier lessons and adding notes in the margins about Philippians 4 verse 11 during the 2022 election period. The last image of the years remains Manny at the kitchen table in that house on an ordinary Tuesday in 2023 the Bible open to the same marked page from 2012 the highlighter cap still missing its finger resting on the line about contentment while the city traffic moved past the window outside.

Manny kept the same Tuesday routine through the rest of 2023, driving himself to the Members Church of God International branch on Buendia Avenue in Makati each week where he joined the Wednesday men’s group that listed forty-two regular attendees on its roster. He arrived at 7:15 a.m. on October 17 carrying the reinforced white Bible and sat in the second row, reading aloud from the same Proverbs 16 passage while the group leader, Brother Reyes, recorded the session on a handheld recorder for the branch archive. After the meeting Manny signed a check for 250,000 pesos to cover the branch’s new sound system, the amount noted in the church ledger under the heading “Pacquiao Family Gift, October 2023.”

In December Jinkee organized the annual family reading at the Forbes Park house, inviting thirty-one relatives including Manny’s sister Isidra and her husband who flew in from General Santos. The group met each evening from December 18 through Christmas Eve in the ground-floor study, taking turns with the book of Romans; Manny read chapter 8 verses 38 and 39 on the twenty-second, pausing after the phrase “neither height nor depth” to ask his nephew to repeat the line. The sessions ended each night at 10:40 p.m. with the children returning their chairs to the long table before the household staff cleared the water glasses.

The 2024 schedule included a single public appearance at the National Bible Week observance held January 22 at the Philippine International Convention Center where Manny addressed 1,800 participants and quoted 2 Timothy 2 verse 15 from memory without notes. He left the stage at 11:05 a.m., returned to the waiting van, and drove directly to the Wild Card Gym satellite session in Quezon City where he reviewed mitt work footage with Roach via video call. The following month he declined an invitation to the March 8 WBC anniversary dinner in Las Vegas because the date conflicted with the scheduled reading of James chapter 1 at the Pasay apartment.

By mid-2024 the reinforced spine of the white Bible had been replaced a second time with archival tape after the pages from Philippians began to separate during a flight to Davao. Manny added a new margin note on June 11 beside Philippians 4 verse 13 during a layover at NAIA Terminal 3, writing the date and the words “strength in every season” in blue ink. Jinkee kept a separate ledger listing the verses read each Sunday evening; the entry for July 7 recorded that their youngest child read Colossians 3 verse 23 and asked for the meaning of the word “heartily.”

The Senate office in Pasay maintained a standing Tuesday afternoon slot for staff Bible study that Manny attended when in the building. On September 10 2024 eight legislative aides joined him for a discussion of Ephesians 6 verses 10 through 18, with Manny supplying the printed copies and leading the closing prayer at 4:50 p.m. before returning to committee work on the afternoon docket. The aides later circulated a one-page summary of the session that included the verse numbers and the exact phrasing Manny used when he spoke of “the full armor” as daily preparation rather than occasional protection.

In early 2025 Manny arranged for the General Santos branch to receive a shipment of 1,200 new Bibles printed in Cebuano, the delivery confirmed by the church warehouse receipt dated February 4. He flew down the following week and sat with the distribution team on the eighth, personally handing copies to the first twenty-seven families on the list before boarding the return flight at 3:40 p.m. Jinkee remained in Manila and continued the apartment readings alone with the children, sending Manny a voice message each Sunday evening that he played back during training breaks in Los Angeles.

The final recorded image comes from March 11 2025 when Manny sat alone at the Forbes Park kitchen table at 6:22 a.m., the white Bible open to the same Proverbs page, the missing highlighter cap replaced by a small silver paperclip. He traced the verse with his index finger while the morning traffic on the street outside moved in its usual pattern, the sound of car horns reaching the open window at regular intervals.

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