MANILA (UCAN): “We have voted for all types of politicians through the years. Promises after promises! Scandal after scandal! Nothing has changed! What is wrong? What is lacking? We have abandoned God! God is lacking in our country,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, the Philippines, said in a February 15 pastoral letter.
Archbishop Villegas urged his compatriots to atone for “personal and national” sins as well as “shunning God” by praying the rosary from March 2 to May 8, the day before national elections.
Through reparation and repentance of sins, the archbishop hoped voters would choose the country’s next leader according to their conscience. A vote based on prayer and repentance would change the nation, he said.
“Our country, the Philippines, needs healing. We are a bleeding nation and if this is not stopped, we will bleed to death,” he said, noting that extrajudicial killings, corruption and lies have contributed to the country’s poor economic and moral state.
“We have seen killings and have seen deaths. Corruption in plunder proportions is admitted by those in power and endured by those in the margins. Vulgarity has become laughable and exemplary. Lies are spread to sow anger and hate,” Archbishop Villegas added.
The archbishop was also critical of the failure of the president, Rodrigo Duterte, to enforce the country’s claims in the South China Sea. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands, invalidated Chinese claims over an area that Filipinos call the West Philippine Sea. But Duterte dismissed the ruling, calling it a “mere scrap of paper.”
Archbishop Villegas said, “[They] are stealing our seas as our lapdog leaders idle and waltz with them. Blasphemy and treachery have dominion. Impunity and apathy grin like a lurking vulture.” The archbishop wondered, “Are we getting our punishment? Let the typhoons and volcanic eruptions and earthquakes and widespread sickness jolt us from our stupor. There is a message [here].”
Quoting Our Lady of Fatima, he said there was no other solution to the country’s problems but prayers.
“At Fatima, the Mother God gave us a message from heaven. Penance! Penance! Penance! Prayers! Prayers! Prayers! Padre Pio said the rosary is the weapon for these times,” the archbishop said.
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Archbishop Villegas urged the country’s more than 100 million Catholics to pray the rosary.
“For every day of the Lenten season, we will pray together for all the civil provinces all over the Philippines according to the enclosed schedule,” the archbishop urged.
“As the rosary is prayed publicly in all churches at a time when most people can join, we also plead that the family rosary at home be restored as a devout family practice even in our workplaces,” he said.
