MANILA: Filipinos paid tribute on Sunday to democracy icon Corazon Aquino, who helped lead a 1986 "people power" revolt that ousted a dictator and whose death last year became a springboard for her son's triumphant run for the presidency.
President Benigno Aquino III led one of several tributes to his mother, calling on Filipinos to continue her struggle for democracy by helping him confront his Southeast Asian nation's illnesses, including poverty and pervasive corruption.
"The clamor of our people for change is so deep," Aquino said during a memorial Mass for his mother at a suburban Manila gymnasium used as a venue for many pro-democracy protests. "None of us can afford to be bystanders."
Aquino called his late mother "one extraordinary woman," who remains deeply beloved a year after she died following yearlong battle with colon cancer at 76. Her death spurred a massive outpouring of national grief that prompted her only son, a quiet lawmaker and bachelor, to run for the presidency, winning by a landslide margin on May 10.
Throngs of people offered prayers and flowers and lit candles Sunday at her white tomb guarded by soldiers. Masses were held across the predominantly Roman Catholic nation in her honor.
A giant photo mosaic of her smiling image was unfurled by her son at Manila's seaside Rizal park on Saturday.
Fondly called "Tita (Auntie) Cory," Corazon Aquino is remembered by many Filipinos as the bespectacled, smiling woman in her trademark yellow dress who helped lead a 1986 nonviolent revolt that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos and swept her to power.
She inherited the mantle of her husband, Benigno Aquino Jr., an opposition senator gunned down by soldiers at Manila's airport in 1983 upon his return from U.S. exile to challenge Marcos.
After her presidency ended in 1992, Aquino continued to serve as a moral compass by joining street protests to safeguard democracy and advocate against corruption and human rights violations.
She was among those who called for her son's predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to resign because of corruption and vote-rigging allegations.
In 2003, she set up a civic movement inspired by the legacy of the 1986 revolt to help provide livelihoods, homes and education for the country's poor — who make up about one-third of the country's 94 million people.