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Death penalty bill directed at individuals

Life is for living. It is to experience freedom to love and help others, to be free to grow and have a family. To be human is to be free from fear and punishment and ill health, poverty and hunger.
 
Living is to be free to think, to speak our thoughts and freely choose the good. To be alive is to have justice and dignity and the fullness of existence. To be able to say I am alive and I know that I am is to be aware of life.
 







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Gunmen descrate church in Cotabato

COTABATO (UCAN): Orlando Cardinal Quevedo, from Cotabato, Mindanao, has condemned reported desecration of a Catholic chapel by terrorist gunmen in the southern Philippines on June 21.
 
The incident, in the village of Malagakit, occurred when about 300 gunmen of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a breakaway faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, attacked Pigcawayan, Cotabato, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of residents.
 
The group has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
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Nations are ruined by hypocrisy cardinal says

MANILA (SE): “God is my joy in every circumstance of my life knowing that he works all things out always for the good of all,” 
 
Luis Cardinal Antonio Tagle, the archbishop of Manila said on the occasion of his 60th birthday on June 21, UCAN reported.
 
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Beware the leaven of fake news bishops say

MANILA (SE): In a June 25 statement Bishop Ruperto Santos, from Balanga, head of the Episcopal Commission on Migrants and Itinerant People, described fake news as a form of escapism to spread lies, UCAN reported. 
 
“False news is sinfulness,” he said, reminding Filipino workers abroad “to avoid false promises.”
 
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Shorter work-week but longer hours

MANILA (SE): The lower house of the Philippine congress is toying with a bill proposing a four-day work week. The member from Baguio City, Mark Go, proposed the bill to amend the Labour Code to require a four-day week instead of the current six days.
 
While it sounds inviting, wait until you read the small print. Go is not suggesting shorter working hours, but that people extend their normal eight-hour day to 12 hours, so they get their 48 hours done in a compressed period of time.
 
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Who remembers what the pope said?

The Philippines seems to be off the international comment agenda of late. Even Pope Francis seems to have forgotten about its existence since his triumphant Palm Sunday-like entrance into Manila in 2015.
 
Papal condolences have been sent to France, Egypt and England on more than one occasion in recent days, but after a catastrophe in a Manila resort, a besieged city and declaration of martial law, as well as a kidnapped priest and people, some in The Philippines must be wondering what more they have to do to do to rate a papal mention.







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Top Muslim body condemns attack on Marawi

COTABATO (SE): “And we have not sent you (O Muhammad), except as a mercy to the world,” the Regional Dural Ifta (House of Opinions) says in a statement condemning the attack on and occupation of Marawi City, in The Philippines by what it describes as the un-Islamic Maute Group.
 
The Cotabato City-based Dural quotes the Sura Al-Anbiya in an appeal to the Maute to abandon its occupation of the city saying, “If they are true Muslims, they must adhere to the teachings and principles of Islam and bring mercy to this world.”
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I saw the murders once… then a thousand times in my dreams

The bishops of The Philippines say they have the same dream for the country as the president, but they want a society built on care, justice and respect, while the president is trying to create a traumatised society hypnotised into obedience. Violence produces trauma… and trauma destroys… We tell just one story
 
 







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No lowering of age of criminal liability

MANILA (UCAN): A decision by the lower house of the congress in Manila to overrule a bill proposing that the age of criminal liability for young people be lowered from the current 15 to as young as nine has been welcomed by rights advocates, prison chaplaincies and social workers.
 
“What is needed is to implement and strengthen the current law in dealing with children in conflict with the law,” Rodolfo Diamante, the secretary of the Commission on Prison Pastoral Care, said on May 29.
 
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