The address I remember best from my college graduation was from a man who had been dead five days. Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador was assassinated while saying Mass on March 24, 1980. On Feb. 17, he had urged US President Jimmy Carter not to support El Salvador’s military…
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The creation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development (House Bills 449, 1518, 1721, 3375, 3639, 5114) is an opportunity for transforming our presently anarchic urban development processes and improving the efficiency and quality of government housing programs and services. Unfortunately, the proposed bills leave much to be desired…
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Is the Church calling for people to march on the 25th?” a friend asked last week. By “Church” she meant not the community of the faithful but the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, a lapse into which even progressive Catholics can fall. Her hopes, and those of other Catholic…
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Following the successful pilot seminar in August 2016, JJCICSI and the Department of Theology of the Ateneo de Manila University recently organized a series of one-day Catholic Social Teaching (CST) seminars for the Institute’s long-time partners in its advocacy work. Dubbed “Isiwalat ang Lihim! Mga Panlipunang Prinsipyong Katoliko sa Ating…
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“Any punitive or sheerly pragmatic approach, whether wielded by government or popular opinion in support of death by legal or non-legal means, denies the God-given value of human life, a value that can never be compromised.” As a social apostolate of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus and…
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At Wacom4, Archbishop Villegas told our young people: “Do not be afraid to wait.” We say to you: “Do not be afraid to wait for us, the faithful.” The Holy Spirit moves ponderously among us, but with certainty. By Gemma Rita R. Marin, Liza L. Lim, and Patrick Z. Falguera,…
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“Paano na ang Pasko? Pinatay na ang tatay ko (What will Christmas be like? My father has been killed),” said one placard at the “Panunuluyan ng Maralitang Tagalungsod,” an annual tradition of urban poor groups reenacting the search of Mary and Joseph for a place where Jesus might be born.…
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A decade after the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (JJWA) was enacted, it now faces its biggest challenge. Among the priority bills of President Duterte and his allies in Congress is the lowering of the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from 15 to 9 years old. The MACR is…
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John J. Carroll, SJ probes into the Filipino blood lust that clamored for Echegaray’s execution and gives a cultural, social and Christian reflection on the death penalty. First published in the Intersect Volume 14, Nos. 4 and 5 April-May 1999 A witness to a hanging in the Philippines, in…
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Knock on the mayor’s door
As of this writing, thousands of members of the urban poor group Kadamay (Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap) are occupying idle units in the housing projects of the National Housing Authority (NHA) in Pandi, Bulacan. If their intention was to get public attention, no one can say that they failed. They…