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Month: August 2021

Journeying Together this Season of Creation 2021 Towards Renewing the Oikos of God

“Code Red for humanity” is how the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres describes the latest IPCC Sixth Assessment Report1 which shows the world is dangerously close to irreversible global warming unequivocally caused by human activities. This is the context where we are called to celebrate the Season of Creation, renewing our home which is on the verge of the abyss.

From September 1 to October 4, the Christian family celebrates the beauty and goodness of creation. This global celebration began in 1989 with the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s recognition of Creation Day, which is September 1, and is now embraced by the wide ecumenical community.

In 2003, through the Pastoral Statement of the Permanent Council2 “Celebrating Creation Day and Creation Time”, CBCP called for the observance of Creation time. In 2015, Pope Francis formally added the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation3 to the Catholic calendar as an annual day of prayer. And in 2016, the Holy Father officially invited all Catholics to celebrate the full season.4 This year, our theme for the Season of Creation is “A Home for all? Renewing the Oikos of God”. In the Philippines, we extend our celebration of this special season to the second Sunday of October, the Indigenous People’s Sunday.

This “time for creation” offers, in the words of Pope Francis, “individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”5

Let us pray for the two important meetings that are happening this year. The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) gathers nations around the world to face the problem of biodiversity loss and the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to address the urgency of the climate crisis. These two issues, climate and biodiversity, are intricately connected, with climate change projected to become an increasingly important driver of biodiversity loss.

On behalf of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, drawing inspiration from our previous pastoral letters and from the vision of Laudato Si’, I would like to enjoin all to:

  1. Celebrate the Season of Creation with your families, communities and parishes. To help you with the celebration please visit https://www.facebook.com/CBCPLaudatoSi for more resources.
  2. Participate in the activities organized through the National Laudato Si’ Program to roll out the Laudato Si’ Action Platform6 – a 7-year journey together towards living the vision of Laudato Si’.
  3. Sign the Healthy Planet, Healthy People Petition7. Invite your families and friends to sign this petition for the upcoming two big meetings on Biodiversity and Climate Change. I encourage all dioceses and parishes to use their social media platforms by connecting to the Facebook page of the CBCP National Laudato Si’ Program to monitor signatures from the Philippines.

Our common home is on the brink of catastrophe. Urgent actions are needed. We hope that this Season of Creation would lead us to renew our commitment to action to ensure that all creation will have a safe and healthy home to flourish and participate in renewing the Oikos of God.

For the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines:

+ROMULO G. VALLES, D.D.
Archbishop of Davao
CBCP President
23 August 2021

Salute to Atty. Rex Fernandez, a people’s lawyer

+Most Rev. Gerardo A. Alminaza
Bishop of San Carlos
Head Convenor, Visayas Clergy Discernment Group

August 31, 2021

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

John 15:13

On behalf of the Visayas Clergy Discernment Group (VCDG), a 2008 CBCP initiative to address social concerns, I express our grief over the senseless murder of human rights lawyer Rex Fernandez.  He was killed last August 26, 2021 in Cebu City.

Lawyer Rex Fernandez, a former Redemptorist seminarian, had a heart for the people and had touched so many lives.

Since 2010, Atty. Rex Fernandez had actively supported the bishops and clergy of the VCDG and the Archdiocese of Cebu Discernment Group in people’s issues, such as labor rights, urban poor welfare, environment protection and good governance.

When the clergy, religious, and lay people in the Visayas, especially in the Archdiocese of Cebu needed legal assistance, he readily offered his time and expertise.

He was a key convenor of the Archdiocese of Cebu-initiated Coalition Against the Pork Barrel System (2014) and the National People’s Initiative to Abolish the Pork Barrel (2015). 

We join the call for a speedy investigation of his murder.

We pray that Atty. Rex did not die in vain. In fact, his sacrifice should lead us to a conversion of heart and mind to that of Jesus’.  In effect, we can courageously and consistently pursue efforts to address the roots of sinful social structures and evil practices.

Atty. Rex, you will surely receive the reward promised by God to His servants, who like Him, laid down his life for His people.

+Most Rev. Gerardo A. Alminaza, DD (SGD.)
Bishop of San Carlos

Joint Statement on postponement of the first BARMM regular election to 2025

The Insider Mediators (IM), together with the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI), lauds both Houses of Congress for moving forward the bills on the proposed extension of the transition period of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) from 2022 to 2025.  In the Senate, Senate Bill 2214 was passed Second Reading on August 25, 2021.  The next day, in the House of Representatives, the Committee on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity,  Committee on Muslim Affairs, and Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms voted affirmatively on the proposed substitute bill submitted by a Technical Working Group created to work on the consolidation of several bills related to the extension.

The Insider Mediators is a network of Bangsamoro stakeholders who are working towards the attainment of a common agenda among the major stakeholders of the region and the realization of peace, justice and harmony among the different communities of the Bangsamoro. The Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI) is a social development and advocacy network of 250 members from faith-based groups, non-government organizations and people’s organizations grouped into 15 regional clusters all over the Philippines.

Both groups look forward to the eventual passage of the bills into law before Congress goes on recess on October 2021. To fast-track the passage and enactment of this bill, IM and PMPI are still hoping that President Rodrigo Roa Duterte would certify the bill as urgent.

The postponement of the elections in the BARMM will allow the Bangsamoro Transition Authority to complete its work in building the bureaucracy before the regular government comes in, enact priority legislation, including a code on indigenous peoples’ rights, on revenue generation, and on regional elections, as provided in the Bangsamoro Organic Act, and implement programs that had been slowed down by the lockdowns from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. The extension of the transition period will also provide much needed time for the realization of the many commitments that remain unimplemented under the normalization track of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

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Cebu-based lawyer ambushed, 57th killed under Duterte

From the Facebook account of Rex Fernandez

Rex JMA Fernandez is the 57th in the list of lawyers and judges killed under the Duterte administration.

Emily Vital  |  August 26, 2021 
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — Human rights lawyer Rex JMA Fernandez was ambushed by a lone assailant this afternoon August 26 in Good Shepherd Road, Banawa, Cebu City. He was 64.

According to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL)’s count, Fernandez is the 57th in the list of lawyers and judges killed under the Duterte administration.

As a former legal counsel of human rights group Karapatan, Fernandez also took on cases of human rights victims filed military officials, including that of torture survivor Raymond Manalo against former Gen. Jovito Palparan Jr.

In a statement, NUPL President Edre Olalia condemned the incident. “No words, indeed. Another colleague has fallen with his boots on. We had lost count. It has not stopped and every lawyer is a sitting duck,” he said.

He described Fernandez as “passionate, intense and brave, even as he was unique in many ways.”

Olalia said that even after Fernandez became inactive in NUPL, he continued to collaborate with fellow human rights lawyers in public interest cases.

Fernandez, founding member of the NUPL, handled the case of the Carbon vendors against the Carbon modernization project of Megawide Construction Corp, according to alternative media group Aninaw Productions. He also served as one of the lawyers of Cebu 8, or the protesters and bystanders arrested during a protest against the Anti-Terror bill on June 5, 2020.

Recently, Fernandez also figured in a dispute with condominium owner over water supply.

“Before he was silenced, he castigated the present administration which he had hitherto placed his sincere hope on would bring change,” Olalia said. “He died disillusioned that it was not meant to be.”

Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)-Cebu chapter also denounced the killing. “An attack on our brother-lawyer for case-related motives is an attack on the justice system and the rule of law we promised to protect,” the group said.

IBP-Cebu called on the authorities to investigate the incident promptly and bring the perpetrators to justice. Lawyers groups have been calling on the Supreme Court to act on the rising cases of extrajudicial killings and threats against the officers of the court.

(https://www.bulatlat.com)

Duque Must Resign Immediately

August 20, 2021

Instead of reproaching the independent state auditing body for doing its job, President Duterte should have called for an investigation on the alleged deficiencies of the Department of Health (DOH) in the use of its P67.3-billion funds for the Covid-19 pandemic response.

The Commission on Audit (COA) said “the deficiencies in the handling of the P67.3-billion pandemic response fund were caused by noncompliance with pertinent laws, rules and regulations, and undermined the timely and efficient response to the pandemic last year.”

It said “the DOH failed to utilize P59.124 billion of its 2020 budget and was unable to use as much as P11.8 billion of the COVID-19 funds, which meant that these “were not translated [into] much-needed health supplies, equipment and services that could have benefited both the health workers and the general public during the critical times of the pandemic.”

To COA’s credit, it has flagged to the taxpayers what they should rightfully know. What is appalling is not the flagging of the COA report but the reaction of the President who said on national television that COA’s report allegedly implies corruption, particularly in connection with a P67.3-billion fund for pandemic response. The President even told Duque to “ignore the COA report, obviously unmindful if not oblivious, that COA is an independent constitutional body whose mandate includes publicly disclosing expenditures by state agencies.

At the start of his presidency, one of Duterte’s avowed commitments is to rid the government of corruption. He even declared that he would fire officials even with just a whiff of corruption.  Why is he now muzzling the agency that guards against corruption, and shielding those who committed irregularities in using public funds?

What we see in all these is a colossal reek of deficiencies, mismanagement and even clear and present signs of corruption that warrant the resignation of Secretary Duque. In the best interest of the suffering Filipino people, he must resign immediately even if his “boss” tells him no to. And if the president cannot or will not rid the government agencies of corrupt officials, he must resign too!

Ecumenical Bishops’ Forum

Standing Up for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Shay Cullen
20 August 2021

Indigenous peoples are under threat as never before and need the international community to stand with them as they demand justice, their ancestral land rights and an end to the exploitation and abuse they suffer in many countries.

They suffer discrimination, stigmatization and racism. How disingenuous that is since all people in the world today descended from some indigenous tribal people through the ages. In fact, DNA tests show that everyone in the world is descended from one common ancestor in Africa. Real science does not lie. The human species emerged in the Makgadikgadi-Okavango wetland. It was not just any home, but the ancestral “homeland” for all modern humans today. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/controversial-study-pinpoints-birthplace-modern-humans

Today, there are more than 476 million indigenous peoples that live in 90 nations around the world. According to the United Nations, they make up 6.2 percent of the world population. They have their own unique languages, culture, customs and traditions and have ancestral rights to their lands having possessed these from time immemorial. They are people that are capable of self-governance and have survived for many thousands of years before nations emerged in history. In the last 500 years, colonialism spread across the world and foreign nations invaded the lands of indigenous people, killed millions and stole and occupied their lands. The indigenous people were infected with western diseases against which they had no defense and millions more died. Others were massacred and driven to the edge of extinction.

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Roundtable Discussion on Integrating Labour Migration Reporting in the Journalism Curriculum in the Philippines

Colleagues:

The Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) is organizing A Roundtable Discussion on Integrating Labour Migration Reporting in the Journalism Curriculum: The Philippine Experience. The event is supported by the World Journalism Education Council (WJEC) and UNESCO.

The forum will feature the experience of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication (AIJC) in crafting the Labour Migration Reporting syllabus with support from the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Please join us in this live virtual event. This is scheduled on 02 September 2021 at 15:00 TO 16:30 (Manila Time).

Registration is free.  To register, visit https://amic.ac-page.com/labor-migration-reporting

Among the discussion points are: the need to offer Labour Migration Reporting in the Journalism Curriculum; main lessons learned in the crafting of the syllabus which can be useful to other countries; challenges journalism educators will likely encounter when they roll out the syllabus; and outcomes expected from journalism students after taking up the course.

Invited to this forum are journalism educators, media and other stakeholders from the Philippines and the Asia Pacific region.

A certificate of participation will be issued to those attending the webinar.

For other concerns, please email IMELDA SAMSON at i.samson@amic.asia.