Pastoral letter to our Filipino seafarers on the celebration of International Seafarers’ Day

The sea is your life. Our life here on earth is our voyage. There are times as you sail, you experience or encounter waves that are rough and violent. It is terrifying. But no matter how rough the sea may be, it returns to reassuring calmness in its majestic vastness.

Life has its ups and downs. It presents many cruel trials and costly troubles. Yet we go on in life. We set our sights on the shore, on our port.

Whether on the water or on dry land, our life can be rough sailing. We are continuously battered and bruised by this unforgiving Covid 19 pandemic. These lockdowns, quarantines, and closing of companies are added storms to our earthly journey. But remember, even if the waves are big and the winds are so strong, we have to raise our sail and keep our hands on the deck.

Along the sea of life; placid or turbulent, deep or vast, when a “​storm gathered and it began to blow a gale” (​ Mark 4:37), remember to do these three essential imperatives:

Reach out
Communicate
Stay on course

First​, our goal is our port; not only to dock to our destination but to get there safe and sound, with our goods complete and whole. The key is to reach out.

It is always a long voyage. There is separation from your loved ones and surely loneliness sets in. Weather can be cruel. Works can be difficult. When these creep in, don’t isolate yourself. Acknowledge the current situation you’re in and initiate to reach out to your trusted shipmate(s). Reach out to us.

You have the Church, especially the Apostolatus Maris on your side, ready and willing to assist you. You are not alone in your journey. We are with you, working for you and welcoming you at our chaplaincies. You have us and we are reaching out to you.

My dear brothers and sisters, let us reach out to our seafarers with compassion and kind understanding. They are our modern-day heroes, not to be falsely labeled as coronavirus carriers. They should be ​accepted, assisted, and accommodated.

A stranded male seafarer was housed by Apostolatus Maria in Manila. He was young and wanted to come home. But he had strong reservations, worried, and afraid. He confided to his chaplain, “Padre, when I went home to my province before, I was always very much welcomed. Everyone was nice, warm, and happy to see me.” With tears rolling down his cheeks he continued, “but now Padre, with this Covid19 pandemic, being in the cruise ship makes me the  suspected coronavirus carrier. Everyone avoids me. I feel that we, the heroes, have become villains.”

June 23, 2020

To: All Laiko Heads of National Lay Organizations & Arch/diocesan Councils of the Laity
Dear Brothers & Sisters,

The peace and love of the risen Lord be with you!

After the success of the series of Post Quarantine Conversations, we are now joyfully shifting gears toward the exciting “Season of Creation Conversations’.

We are very pleased to inform you that the Holy Father announced that this year is a Special Anniversary Year of the Laudato Si’ ( May 24, 2020 to May 24, 2021) and one of the main events the whole Church is preparing for is the “Season of Creation”.

At the forefront of this endeavor is the Global Catholic Climate Movement- Pilipinas, together with their Partner Organizations.

We would like to invite all of you again to join us this June 27, 2020, at 2 pm for the Season of Creation Conversations I: “Journeying Together Towards the Care of our Common Home.” Our guest presentors are: Fr. John Leydon, Bro. John Din and Sr. Bing Carranza of the GCCM-Pilipinas.

We will be using a Zoom application for this. Kindly let us know if you’re capable and available to join this conversation by replying to this email on or before June 26, so that we could send you the link where you could register to actively participate in this meeting as well as the mechanics. It will be on a first- come – first- serve basis since participants are limited to 100 persons only.

Most Rev. Broderick Pabillo and the Laiko Board Members will be joining us in this sharing.

Thank you. Rest assured of my prayers for you and your loved ones’ safety!

Sincerely in the service of the Lord,

June 19,2020

Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy has gone way too far in her red-baiting and vilification activities by accusing one of the living pillars of Philippine activism, Sr. Mary John Mananzan, of aiding and abetting rape, pillage, mass murders, and other horrific crimes.

In her Facebook post on June 17, Badoy said Mananzan was an official of an alleged terrorist organization who “aided and abetted” the following: “rape, pillage, plunder, economic sabotage, mass murders, the destruction of our culture, the unabated blood bath of our indigenous peoples, the burning of schools, the recruitment of our children into the terrorist fold.”

She also accused the 80-year old nun of putting forth “the godless and vicious ideology — communism”, “sowing division and hate” and of using the “hurtful language of hate and intolerance.”

Badoy’s hysterical red-tagging to demonize the activist nun was in response to Mananzan’s earlier post calling out Judge Rainelda Montesa for her guilty verdict of cyber libel on journalists Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos, Jr.

Such wild and baseless accusations coming from an undersecretary and official of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) not only defames Sr. Mary John’s person and reputation but puts her life and liberty in peril. Precedents are aplenty: human rights defenders and social activists first being name-called as “communist terrorists” by government officials and thereafer being illegally arrested and charged with trumped up crimes or worse, being victims of extrajudicial killings.

Under the new Anti-Terrorism Act awaiting Pres. Duterte’s signature, such accusations can result in Mananzan’s designation as a suspected “terrorist” subject to 24-hour surveillance, warrantless arrest and detention without charges of up to 24 days, and a host of other violations of her rights and liberties.

Mananzan is only the latest in a long list of activists and Duterte critics red-tagged by Badoy and the agencies she works with. We demand a public apology from Badoy retracting and correcting her condemnable Facebook post. We demand that the PCOO, NTF-ELCAC, AFP and PNP stop their vicious, malicious and dangerous red-tagging activities. There will be consequences should Badoy and her ilk persist in their unconscionable conduct.#

June 19, 2020

Nearing death’s door, aging and ailing Negros farmers mourn over Danding’s failure to return to them their land before tycoon died

‘Cojuangco lived and died rich, while we continue to be poor and may likely die still poor and landless despite working hard’

Following Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr.’s recent demise, aging and ailing farmers of Negros Occidental expressed grief not just over his passing, but also because the businessman died without returning a vast agricultural landholding in the province to them, even when the said property was awarded to the peasants over two decades ago through the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

“Many people were saddened by Mr. Cojuangco’s death. They remembered him as the kingmaker, the tycoon, and the boss of a company that sells the country’s most popular beer. Some politicians even described him as a very nice person with a kind heart,” said Noel Magan, president of the ECJ CLOA Holders and Farm Workers Association (ECHAFAWA)-TFM, a Negros-based peasant group and member of the national peasant federation Task Force Mapalad.

“But for us, his former farmworkers, while we also condole with his family and loved ones over their loss, what we will never forget was Cojuangco’s failure, in fact, refusal to give up control over a landholding that was no longer his,” Magan said.

“This caused us misery, prolonging our hardship, especially among my fellow peasants, who have grown old serving no one but Boss Danding but stayed poor and are now suffering from serious illnesses but can’t afford treatment. Perhaps, they would later on die without also affording a decent burial,” he added.

Magan is referring to the 12 contiguous haciendas covering 4,654 hectares found in the cities of Bago and La Carlota and the towns of La Castellana, Isabela, Hinigaran, Murcia, San Enrique, Himamaylan, and Pontevedra, all in Negros Occidental.

The haciendas, used to be owned by the late Cojuangco through his firm, ECJ & Sons Agricultural Enterprises, Inc. were supposedly awarded to Magan and 1,200 other farmworkers, through certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) that were generated in their favor by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in 1997.

However, the farmworkers/CARP beneficiaries were unable to directly manage their haciendas and benefit from the fruits of their labor “because Cojuangco remained the lord of the landholdings,” said Magan.

Cojuangco’s continued grip over the haciendas became possible through DAR Administrative Order No. 2 of 1999, issued by then Agrarian Reform Secretary Horacio Morales Jr., during the presidency of Joseph Estrada, who was Cojuangco’s vice presidential running mate in the 1992 polls. The order set the rules and regulations for the establishment of a joint agribusiness venture between Cojuangco and the CARP beneficiaries.

Under the business deal, Magan’s group, through the ECJ Farmworkers Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Multipurpose Cooperative, the use of the landholdings owned by the CARP beneficiaries would be assigned to the joint enterprise in exchange for a 30 percent equity in the venture, while Cojuangco’s camp would get 70 percent-equity in exchange for providing capital, facilities, and technical expertise to operate the haciendas.