Cavite churches pool funds for Marawi rehab

SAN PEDRO CITY—Catholic churches in Cavite province are raising funds for its “adopt a community” program in Marawi City, the Lanao del Sur provincial capital ravaged by the five-month fighting between government forces and Islamic State-inspired terrorists.

In December, the Diocese of Imus, through its social action office, donated P750,000 out of the church’s emergency and calamity fund as an immediate response to calls for help.

Apart from this, Fr. Dominador Medina, the parish priest of San Roque in Cavite City and a project proponent, said they were aiming to raise around P20 million to fund an “adopt a community” program for residents displaced by war.

In May last year, gunmen from the Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups laid siege to Marawi, resulting in the displacement of more than 200,000 residents.

 ‘Long-range’

“We wanted [the fundraising] sustained, long-range,” Medina said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

As of Tuesday, his parish had raised P814,160, of which the P500,000 came from church projects which church officials decided to suspend or forego. The rest of the amount came from individual donations.

The Diocese of Imus, led by Bishop Reynaldo Evangelista, is composed of 80 parishes.

Medina said the money would be coursed through Marawi Bishop Edwin dela Peña.

“(The reconstruction of) the infrastructure, we leave it up to the government. What we want to focus on are the livelihood and psychological (recovery of the people),” Medina added. —MARICAR CINCO