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Philippine Catholic bishops have backed a government decision to prohibit kidney transplants on foreign patients as part of a bid to regulate sales of kidneys and other human organs. GMA News reports the Catholic Church threw its full support behind the Department of Health’s decision to totally prohibit the transplants.
The Society of the Divine Word’s Philippines Central Province (SVD PHC) began its two-year celebration of 100 years of missionary presence in the Philippines at Quezon City, highlighting mssion challenges today. The Order is planning the creation of a missiology institute as part of the centennial project.
The Catholic bishops of the Philippines have decried the widespread “immoral and grossly exploitative” practice of soliciting donations of vital human organs which offends the dignity of the person for economic profit. The Bishops’ Conference intervened to call attention to the “spreading organ trafficking, particularly the commercialization of kidneys, which is silently but steadily thriving in rural and urban poor communities.” The phenomenon is in the hands of organized crime which does not hesitate to abduct and kill street children, homeless people, ordinary people for the trafficking of vital organs.
Northern Philippine Church workers are planting trees and campaigning against quarrying to help restore the famed rice terraces that face removal from the United Nations’ World Heritage List. “We are aware of the various threats to the rice terraces and we are doing our part to respond to these through our Integrity of Creation program,” Rowena Ngitiw, Bontoc-Lagawe vicariate’s Social Action and Development Center coordinator, explained.
For his pivotal role in the integral growth of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC), the Ateneo de Manila conferred the Bukas Palad Award upon Fr. Edward F. Malone, a Maryknoll Missionary.
The faithful can now partake in Sunday Mass and other rites on solemn occasions in the many shopping malls that dot the landscape of the Philippines, this according to Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, Archbishop of Manila.
Caritas Manila, the social service agency of the Archdiocese of Manila, wants to educate 10,000 poor students by 2010 as part of an ambitious plan to help 300,000 families in the Filipino capital.
