‘Overcome with grief, but not defeated, silenced’

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

“We are overcome with grief, but we are not defeated nor silenced.”

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines urged the faithful to continue opposing the bill reviving the death penalty even as it was approved on third and final reading on Tuesday at the House of Representatives.

In a text message sent on Tuesday night, CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas lamented that Congress “has given its consent for the State to kill.”

However, he assured that the country’s bishops and the Church will not be defeated by the vote that approved the restoration of the death penalty for drug-related offenses.

“We, your bishops, are overcome with grief but we are not defeated nor shall we be silenced,” he said.

Villegas noted that the approval of the controversial measure, which the Church has always opposed, happened in the season of Lent during which Christians “prepare to celebrate their triumph of life over death.

“… while we grieve that the Lower House has voted for death, our faith assures us that life will triumph,” the CBCP president said.

The CBCP called on the Catholic faithful and all Filipinos to stand for life and continue the spirited opposition to the death penalty bill.

Villegas also appealed to “Catholic lawyers, judges and jurists to allow the gentleness of the Gospel of Life to illumine their reading and application of the law, so that their service to society as teachers and agents of the law and of justice may bring life.”

It may be recalled that the Catholic faithful, in a show of force, held a well-attended Walk of Life prayer rally last month at the Quirino Grandstand to oppose the death penalty bill as well as the spate of killings amid the government’s war against illegal drugs.

Mainly organized by lay people, the prayer rally was attended by over 10,000 Catholics and people from other faiths who wanted to voice their objection to the death penalty bill.

In January, the CBCP also issued a pastoral statement following their three day plenary assembly, in which the bishops reiterated their firm stand against the controversial measure.