MANILA (SE): The bishops have copped a tough ask from the chief of the Philippine National Police, Ronald dela Rosa, when he called for a little bit of trust from the Church in the national campaign against drugs, which to date has left almost 8,000 dead bodies, mostly of poor people, strewn around the country.

MANILA (SE): The Philippines is widely hailed as the only Catholic country in Asia, but despite being Catholic, it is struggling to live out its Christian values.

In recent months, Archbishop Socrates Villegas has lamented the silence of his flock in the face of the mass killing of the poor instigated by the president, Rodrigo Duterte, saying that it is the complicity of silence from the pews that has enabled the massacre to prosper.

MANILA (UCAN): As a new broom has come into Malacañang on the promise of defending the rights of the poor of The Philippines, Bishop Broderick Pabillo challenged the labour sector to put in a call for an end to temporary labour contracting, which is seen as being responsible for an up in the poverty level.

“Filipino workers must come together and set aside political ideology to ensure oneness of our voice and stamp out the practice,” the auxiliary bishop of Manila said on July 4.

QUEZON CITY (SE): “It is very troubling that the police and the military are always being sent to harass, wound and kill the poor—whether they be farmers, lumads, urban poor or workers who protest and rally because they suffer and their rights are not being addressed,” Bishop Broderick Pabillo said in a formal condemnation of the violent dispersal of farmers who had rallied on a main road in Kidapawan City on April 1 to call attention to their plight in the drought affected region.

MANILA (SE): Bishop Broderick Pabillo lost out in his call for the newly implemented Kindergarten to Year 12 (K-12) educational system, adopted in The Philippines around two years ago, to be stopped for the time being while the Catholic Educators Association rejoiced, insisting that the programme must go ahead.