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Monday, February 26, 2018
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MANILA – Around a thousand Roman Catholics marched to protest President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and his efforts to reinstate the death penalty.
The pre-dawn protest dubbed “Walk for Life,” organized by church groups on Saturday, also called against the passage of a divorce bill that is being championed by Duterte’s allies in Congress.
It came a day after students in Manila and some provincial universities held demonstrations against Duterte, and a day before the 32nd anniversary of the EDSA People Power that drove dictator Ferdinand Marcos into exile.
Catholic devotees prayed the rosary and sang hymns as bishops and the Philippines’ own cardinal read sermons against what they say are not “pro-life” policies in the government.
The protesters carried banners and placards with the massage “Protect and Defend the Sanctity of Life and Marriage,” “End Impunity” and “Stop the Killings.”
The Catholic Church counts about 80 percent of Filipinos as followers and its lobbying has helped make the Philippines the only state in the world aside from the Vatican where divorce is illegal. Abortion and same-sex marriage are also outlawed.
“Christ the Lord raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament. Let not Congress lay waste these victories with a divorce bill,” the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said in a pastoral letter read at the march.
“What God has joined together, no man, no human being must separate. No to divorce,” the letter read.
Duterte has not personally taken a stance on the divorce bill but he has actively attacked the Catholic Church since taking office in 2016, accusing the clergy of sexual abuses and hypocrisy.
And despite criticism of his bloody war on drugs, Duterte remained a widely popular and trusted public official in the country.
The Social Weather Stations’ latest quarterly poll showed Duterte’s trust rating bounced back to “excellent” in December from “very high” three months before.
Another survey by the privately run pollster gave his government the best rating so far for a Philippine administration since surveys started in the 1980s.
Majority of the Philippines’ 105 million people are Catholic. Despite the popularity of the antidrug crackdown, some sectors of the church have become increasingly vocal on the drug killings, with the church calling for justice and offering sanctuary to drug users.
“The threat is still there. We still hear news of extrajudicial killings. And still the bill of the death penalty is in Congress,” said Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo.
Pabillo, one of the leaders of Saturday’s rally, said the Church’s opposition to divorce and its criticism of extrajudicial killings under Duterte emerged from a shared “pro-life” stance on both issues.
“All of that involves life: the taking of life, even divorce … That deals with the family that is the center of life,” he said.
More than 4,000 suspected drug dealers have been killed since Duterte took office. Police said the killings resulted from self-defense during raids and sting operations. (Reuters and AFP)
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