Published April 16, 2021, 6:58 PM
Caritas Philippines has urged President Duterte to reconsider the lifting of the mining moratorium.
“The Catholic Church, through Caritas Philippines, the Eco-Convergence and the CBCP National Laudato Si Program strongly enjoin President Duterte to reconsider the lifting of the mining moratorium,” Kidapawan Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo, Caritas Philippines national director said, in a statement on Friday, April 16.
Bishop Jose Collin Bagaforo of Kidapawan, National director of Caritas Philippines. (CBCP/ MANILA BULLETIN)
He added that such action which is a “sign of desperation to solve the ginormous economic gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic” is unsustainable destructive and extremely detrimental to the Filipino communities in the peripheries and the Philippine ecology.
MANILA: The appeal comes in a recent pastoral statement by Archbishop Ricardo Baccay of Tuguegarao, chairman of the Office on Bioethics of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). “We therefore support the efforts of our national government to procure and to deploy these vaccines in our country, and we thank the private organizations who have come forward to help acquire them,” says the statement endorsed by CBCP president, Archbishop Romulo Valles of Davao.
Prioritizing the vulnerable
In the statement, the bishops urge the government and the private organizations “to commit to a vaccine distribution plan that prioritizes doctors who are on the front lines and those who are most at risk.” They noted that it would be a “moral tragedy” if young, healthy company employees who are at low risk for the disease were to be inoculated before the doctors, nurses, other frontliners and senior citizens who are at higher risk of infection.
PASIG CITY, Jan. 17 (PIA) The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)-Episcopal Commission for Bioethics on Saturday lauded the government for giving priority to less fortunate Filipinos in the National COVID-19 Vaccination Program.
“We especially commend our national government for considering the poor in our national vaccination program. The poor are beloved of the Lord. They should be specially protected because their poverty makes them vulnerable to infection and severe disease,” Tuguegarao Archbishop Ricardo Baccay, chairman of the Commission, said in a pastoral statement.
Baccay also urged the people to have themselves vaccinated.
“The COVID-19 vaccines will only be able to end the pandemic in our country if enough Filipinos are vaccinated so we urge all of our people to be immunized when the vaccines arrive in the Philippines,” he said.
The Catholic bishops of the Philippines are calling on the government to ensure that the planned Covid-19 vaccination programme is accessible to all, .
Philippine diocese vows to plant 1.2 million trees
Flood-stricken diocese partners with government and civic groups in reforestation project
A family sit on the roof of their home to escape floodwater brought by Super Typhoon Goni in Albay province in the Philippines on Nov. 1, 2020. (Photo supplied)
An archdiocese in the northern Philippines is to plant more than 1 million trees using government-donated saplings in a reforestation project in response to two super typhoons that ravaged Cagayan province late last year.
In a project called Missio 500, organizers in Tuguegarao Archdiocese are looking for churchgoers to plant the trees in 500 days.
“Missio 500 is an ecology initiative that aims to plant 500 trees per day in Tuguegarao Archdiocese together with its suffragan dioceses, namely Ilagan, Bayombong, Tabuk and Batanes. These dioceses suffered great floods during the typhoons in 2020,” the archdiocese said on social media.