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President Aquino plans to issue a historical Executive Order (EO) to regulate the mining industry to protect the environment and the rights of people. A strict order is needed and, hopefully, it will levy at least a 20% tax on mining profits. Hundreds of thousands of justice-loving Filipinos live in hope and expectation that it will be so.
I was in Italy when I learned of the killing of Fr. Fausto Tentorio, a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME). Immediately after, I started receiving calls and messages from the Philippines and Italy expressing solidarity. I said to myself that Fr. Fausto Tentorio is the third PIME priest killed in the Philippines – Fr. Tullio Favali in 1985, Fr. Salvatore Carzedda in 1992, and now Fr. Fausto. After this thought came the realization that Fr. Tullio was killed in the context of living in a parish to help the Christian community to grow; Fr. Salvatore in the context of dialogue between Christians and Muslims; and now Fr. Fausto, who lived with the tribal people.
The photograph of Juanito, a street boy, 14, dressed in nothing but dirty shorts, his only earthly possession. He was poverty personified.
We live in a time of high anxiety. Despite the world’s unprecedented total wealth, there is vast insecurity, unrest, and dissatisfaction. In the United States, a large majority of Americans believe that the country is “on the wrong track.” Pessimism has soared. The same is true in many other places.
Violence is the dominant theme of the daily news around the world. In Libya, Syria, Somalia, hundreds are dying and thousands are starving to death because of violence driven by ideological extremism. In the Philippines, a mini civil war is underway; mass killing is the preferred method of crushing dissent and subduing opposition and the struggle for freedom and equality. Here, Al Qaeda-linked groups’ battle for the ideal of Islamic “freedom” which can be more oppressive than what went before.
Hunger is everywhere, we just don’t see it. Most of us are well fed, overfed, some to the point of death. Obesity and diabetes are killers and all because of junk food, bad food, chemical-treated processed food, instant food, TV food, wasted food, too much food. The developed world, throws away enough food, bad as it is, to feed millions of hungry people. We all need to eat fresh, non-processed, home-cooked chemical-free food, less meat, more vegetables and fruits. We will live healthier and longer. In the developing world the poor have little to eat.
In the past, the ascetic tradition of various religions seemed to be motivated by a denial of the value of the world. Often, salvation was presented as removing humans from the natural world, as if somehow matter itself was tainted, and could not, in any way, be associated with the world of the spirit. Manichaeism depicted the world as radically deficient and that even the human body is somehow evil. While many of the Fathers of the Church, including St. Augustine, opposed Manichaeism, they were not always enthusiastic about the natural world or even the human body.
When I was visiting the hovels of the poor in the overcrowded slums of Manila, where we are setting up livelihood projects for the impoverished families of young teenagers we rescue from the horrific conditions of overcrowded disease infested jails, I met Mark and his hardworking mother. She has a junk collection business and the tiny hovel made of bits of broken plywood, flattened tin cans and plastic sheets was half filled with the collections they had made. Their treasure was plastic bottles, crushed aluminum cans, bits of plastic, old newspaper, all useless junk to you and me but the difference between life and death for the family.
Excerpt from a paper delivered by the author at a gathering on the occasion of the Inter-Faith Council of Leaders’ (IFCL) 10th anniversary, promoted by Silsilah Dialogue Movemen
No wonder that the new Philippine “Aquino administration” made anti-corruption its main drive against poverty. “If there is no corruption, there will be no poverty,” says President Noynoy Aquino. This was the slogan that won him the election. It’s so true and yet the solutions are still so hard to find and reform is almost impossible to achieve at this time with many corrupt politicians and their cronies still in government. They are entrenched and are opposing and thwarting the efforts of Aquino to fight corrupt practices.
