PIME missionary and bishops’ appeal against fear to denounce injustice
Fr Sebastiano D'Ambra talks about the letter "Our country and our faith" by the president of the Bishops’ Conference, seen as an invitation "not to let threats silence the Church’s message”. Christians tend to be afraid, "but we have to be brave." Extrajudicial killings and Marcos’s hero reburial are another source of tensions” in society. The pastoral letter also defends the family and workers.
Manila (AsiaNews) – Mgr Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), issued a pastoral titled ‘Our country and our faith’ at the end of a meeting of its Permanent Council.
For Fr Sebastiano D'Ambra, PIME missionary in the Philippines, Mgr Villegas’s statement, dated 22 November, "is appropriate because Christians tend to be afraid in these difficult times.” Instead, this “is a time when we have to be brave and see what we can do for the future. Now we are at the stage of denouncing injustice”.
In the letter, Mgr Villegas calls on the faithful not to let the threats silence the Church’s message on moral issues important for the life of the country.
“We have a Gospel to preach,” the bishop says in the letter. “We have the person of Jesus to proclaim. We will do so, in season and out of season. We are enemies to none. We endeavor to be merciful.”
The five-page letter is a response to country’s current socio-political situation, and it analyses the issues of poverty, work, family law, and the government's war on drug.
Since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte, more than 5,000 people have been killed without due process for their involvement, real or alleged, in the drug trade, largely at the hands of police or members of armed groups.
The daily reports of extrajudicial killings “are very disturbing and truly distressing,” the pastoral letter notes. “There is no way that a government can credibly claim that it is waging a relentless war on drugs to preserve life – while in the process abetting, encouraging or fomenting the destruction of life, thought – wrongly – to be unworthy!”
“While some of these killings are being investigated both by the police and the Commission on Human Rights, no one has been charged, signalling what appears to be complete impunity,” the Network Against Killings in the Philippines (NAKPhilippines) noted.
With respect to the extrajudicial killings, Fr D'Ambra notes that “A Redemptorist priest, a friend of mine, agrees. He has directly accused Duterte for the 'death squads' he organised when he was mayor of Davao. More than a thousand people were murdered on his will. [Now] He is using the same approach to kill drug dealers at the national level."
Another source of tensions is the reburial of the late dictator Marcos in the nation’s Heroes' Cemetery in the capital on 18 November. "Today, a big demonstration is underway in Manila against this decision,” the missionary said. “Protests are planned in Zamboanga,” on the island Mindanao.
On the issue of family and economic hardships, Mgr Villegas calls on "Filipino businessmen as well as foreign investors to make it possible for every Filipino to aspire after a fulfilling future for herself and for her family in our own land!”
Back in September, the bishops had equally slammed all attacks on life, including abortion, "which cry to heaven for divine justice."
For his part, during his trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis warned against the "ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family".
.png)
