Category: Uncategorized

On-ground and Social Media Campaign

November 17, 2021 
Mass/Prayers for Justice at 8AM
Nationwide Ringing of Church Bells at 8:30AM

November 18, 2021
Multi-sectoral Caravan Motorcade, 10am

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

(Luke 19:40)

RING THE CHURCH BELLS!  
Ring out Justice.

RING THE CHURCH BELLS!
Honor the martyrs and heroes of the dark days of the Marcos’ Martial Law.

RING THE CHURCH BELLS!  
Ring out solidarity with the victims and survivors.
Drink in their inspiration and burn with the passion of their activism, that could neither be quenched nor extinguished,

RING THE CHURCH BELLS! 
Let them resound throughout the land.

RING THEM LOUD AND CLEAR, 
so the world will know:

MARCOS IS NO HERO!

On November 18, 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte buried the last dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.  This was an affront to survivors of the Marcos’ Martial Law. Every Filipino who is still paying the debt from the billions of pesos stolen by the Marcos family should be disturbed by such efforts of historic revision.

Now that Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. is running for president likely together with Sarah Duterte as his vice-president partner in the campaign, it is urgent for Church people to remind the public of the truth about the despotic leadership during the Marcos Martial Law and the Duterte administration (that also invoked Martial Law in Mindanao).

Now is a Kairos moment for the Christian faithful to rise with the nation 
To SPEAK TRUTH and RING OUT THE CRY FOR JUSTICE! 
We refuse to forget the misery of the dark days of the Marcos’ Martial Law.

As global warming brings increasingly extreme weather, people in the province of Albay fear that “nowhere is safe”

Agence France Presse
October 26, 2021

A year after a powerful storm sent an avalanche of volcanic rock and sand crashing down, burying her house, Philippine food vendor Florivic Baldoza still lives in an evacuation centre.

As global warming brings increasingly extreme weather, she now fears “nowhere is safe.”

Hundreds of families from poor villages around Mayon volcano in Albay province on the country’s most populous island of Luzon are waiting for new homes after Typhoon Goni pounded the region last November.

“That’s the strongest I’ve ever experienced,” Baldoza, 40, told AFP, standing on a mound of dark sand that now covers the house she once shared with her husband and two teenage daughters.

Several hundred thousand people fled as Goni barrelled towards the archipelago nation — ranked as one of the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

But some residents in San Francisco village — including Baldoza’s family — ignored warnings to shelter in a school, confident a river dike built several years ago would protect them from flooding.

As the most powerful typhoon to hit the country last year dumped heavy rain on an area still sodden from another cyclone a week earlier, Baldoza realised her family was in peril when water began cascading over the several metres high cement wall.

They bolted to her mother’s house across the road as a devastating mix of water, volcanic sand and boulders smashed the dike further upstream and tore through the village.

“We were trapped inside the house,” Baldoza told AFP. “We were crying, my husband was separated from us — we thought he was dead.”

Lucky to be alive, but trapped in deep mud, Baldoza and eight relatives, including children, twisted their bodies from side to side to escape, then climbed out a window and up on to the roof.

Her husband, Alexander, survived by scrambling up a mango tree.

Holding on to a powerline to avoid being blown away by fierce winds, the family clambered over the top of several houses before reaching a taller building.

“Our house was being hit by boulders, but we couldn’t do anything,” said Baldoza, who watched helplessly as the torrent swept away the family’s motorised tricycle and motorbike.

“If we hadn’t left our house, we would have died.”

‘Disaster capital’

It is not the first time excessive rain has forced Baldoza to relocate.

About 23 years ago, before Baldoza got married, her mother sold their house in a flood-prone area of the same village and moved the family to higher ground.

“We didn’t expect that we would experience the same thing,” Baldoza said.