World Touch
PHILIPPINES: Mission Stations In Shopping Malls And Slums
In order to meet the spiritual needs of people living in slums or working in shopping malls, “urban mission stations” have emerged, which can be found in hospitals, train stations, airports, government offices, shopping centers, and also in social hotspots. These “new oases of peace in the desert of the big city” of Kalookan are specially designed for people living in the vast, miserable, crime-ridden, and violent slums of northern Greater Manila.
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Apr 2023The diocese of Kalookan comprises 32 parishes and 17 municipal missions in Greater Manila, a conglomerate of 17 cities with a total population of 12 million.
The initiative to create “points of light” in the slums or in areas where people experience great economic and social hardship was launched five years ago and wants to go to the “existential peripheries,” explains 62-year-old Msgr. Pablo Virgilio David, Bishop of Kalookan and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.