Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been very vocal on his stand for the restoration of the death penalty. However, local entities including the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines or CBCP opposed such idea.
Death penalty is one of the highly scrutinized issues in the Philippines right now apart from the alleged extrajudicial killings being attributed to the current administration. Under those circumstances, the Philippine Catholic Church calls to block the restoration of the death penalty as it would encourage the proliferation of the so-called culture of death in the country.
To show their stand against the plan of Duterte to restore the death penalty, the Catholic groups and leaders created a prayer and organized some peace protest in the different areas of the country.
"There is in our land a cry for vengeance and a move to fill up death rows and kill offenders but disguised as a call for justice. Let true and lasting justice spring forth," Reuters quoted part of the prayer Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Manila's archbishop.
Meanwhile, Bishop Patricio Buzon of the Diocese of Bacolod asked lay faithful of his diocese to join the Church to rally against the re-imposition of death penalty. The bishop viewed such move as a step-backward, and expressed pity for the super majority of the Congress, which he claims to be aligned with Duterte's administration.
"The whole of humanity is moving forward already and is awakened to the appreciation of the value of human life. Before, there was a death penalty because maybe there's no other way stopping the criminals. But now, conditions have changed. The condition no longer warrants the death penalty," SunStar Philippines quoted Bp. Buzon as saying.
Armed only with their faith and prayers, Catholic leaders in the Philippines, call to lobby with those in power to convince them not to approve the reimposition of death penalty. However, it seems like the plan of the current administration to restore the death penalty may have already gained its momentum, for last week the House justice committee approved the measure which seeks to restore the capital punishment in the Philippines, according to Sunstar.
Guess we would just have to wait and see how things will turn for Duterte's plan to restore the death penalty in the Philippines and the move of Catholic bishops to stop its reimposition.