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BY RESEL JOY TIANERO
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Friday, February 24, 2017
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ILOILO City – Today, the Archdiocese of Jaro is leading a caravan against the revival of the death penalty.
The “Caravan for Life” begins at the grounds of the Jaro Cathedral. It starts at 1:30 p.m.
According to Monsignor Meliton Oso of the Jaro Archdiocesan Social Action Center (JASAC), the peaceful caravan is the Church’s way of stating its position on proposals to reimpose capital punishment that the Arroyo administration abolished in 2006.
This is also an expression of opposition to extrajudicial killings, he added.
The Church is traditionally against the death penalty. It teaches that no man has the right to take the life of another.
Churches in southern and northern Iloilo will also conduct caravans in their areas.
“We do this for the love of our people,” said Father Ricky Soriano of Tigbauan, Iloilo’s St. John de Sahagun Parish.
In Manila, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said summary executions must stop immediately because no civilized country can let such illegal acts to go on unabated.
“They (criminals) ought to be judged by the court of law and never by the extrajudicial means,” Villegas said in his message for the “Walk for Life” held at the Qurino Grandstand in Manila on Feb. 17.
The prelate stressed that law offenders ought to be arrested, prosecuted, sentenced and jailed to correct the wrongdoings they committed.
He scored the political pressure on lawmakers to immediately pass a bill for the restoration of the death penalty and urged the leadership in the lower House to allow “conscience vote.”
“Partisan politics is fleeting. Conscience is the voice of God inside everyone of us. Respect our conscience,” he said.
Villegas reiterated that if only to fight criminalities, the government must reform the criminal justice system instead of reviving the capital punishment.
This include, according to him, by cleansing the ranks of the police, reforming the judiciary and strictly enforcing rules in country’s prisons.
“Execution is murder,’ he said. “We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing those who kill. It also increases the number of killers.” (With a report from CBCPNews/PN)
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