ASIA/PHILIPPINES - Bishops launch an appeal to citizens to help nation overcome economic crisis. “Overcoming the crisis is a matter not only for the government it is in the interest of each and all”

Thursday, 2 September 2004

Davao (Fides Service) - The Catholic Bishops of the Philippines have mobilised the country to work to uproot corruption, eliminate poverty and help improve the nation’s financial accounts.
Archbishop Fernando Capalla of Davao who is President of the Bishops’ Conference issued a pastoral letter on 31 August with the title “Let us share: an answer to the crisis”. In the letter he says: “If each of us, 85 million citizens, offers one Peso per person, we will collect 85 million Pesos: a sum which can help the government overcome the economic crisis”.
The Archbishop recalls similar action by the people of Thailand and Korea during the financial crisis in Asia in the 1990s “Today our government needs money to ensure the common good” - said - “This is not only a matter for the government it is in the interest of each and all”.
Archbishop Capalla writes, stressing that he does so as Archbishop of Davao: “We must not start telling others what to do. We must each start with ourselves”.
The Archbishop says that what is important is the common good, not the amount of money which could be collected.
The letter can be set in a major topic of Philippines politics at the moment: president Gloria Arroyo, just re-elected, has asked the people to make sacrifices for a time to heal the national deficit (over 60 billion US dollars).
Recently Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales of Manila said he endorsed the request made by people to Philippines members of Parliament to reduce government financing (about 70 million Pesos per year) and to distribute it in the form of projects and funding in the districts in which they were elected. Much of this money ends up in the rivulets of corruption.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 1/9/2004 lines 31 words 356)


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