FILIPINA demographer Mercedes Concepcion was sure a revolution was looming when the Vatican birth control commission submitted the so-called “majority report” recommending to Pope Paul VI a radical departure from the Church strictures on contraception.

“I was sure we had made history,” the future National Scientist, one of only two Asian experts in the commission, was quoted as saying in one of the footnotes of the book, Guests in Their Own House: The Women of Vatican II by Carmel McEnroy.