UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
* A UK newspaper, with some help from Nobel Prize nominated Irish priest, Fr. Shay Cullen, an advocate for Manila’s many “street kids”, has shockingly reported, with graphic pictures, that hundreds of boys and girls have been rounded up from doorways and roadsides by officials and put behind bars in recent weeks to make the poverty-racked city more presentable when Pope Francis arrives. Please see the must read article at:
* [Daily Mail]
* The UK article’s “bulletin points” are quite shocking, see:
* “Street children in Manila are being rounded up before the Pope’s arrival”
* “Officials claim it is to stop gangs of beggars targeting the Pope”
* “But critics say it is a cynical move breaching the children’s human rights”
* “MailOnline investigation finds horrendous conditions at the centres”
* “Children forced to sleep on floors and kept with adults who beat them”
* “Some children have been starved and chained to pillars in the centres”
* “One child rounded up 59 times – yet he is still living on the streets”
* The UK article reports that: “Rosalinda Orobia, head of Social Welfare Department in Manila’s central Pasay district, confirmed her officials had for weeks been detaining street children in the areas the Pope will visit and had taken in children as young as five.”
* “Bizarrely, she claimed the operations were aimed at stopping begging syndicates targeting the Pope rather than tidying up the city. ‘They (the syndicates) know the Pope cares about poor kids, and they will take advantage of that,’ she told the Manila Standard newspaper”.
* In an editorial, the Manila newspaper reportedly slammed the official’s remarks, saying: “We should all be scandalized by the government’s artificial campaign to keep the streets free of poor children only for the duration of the papal visit.”
* This is outrageous. The ex-bouncer pope, who knows well the slums of Buenos Aires, does not need to be shielded from the sights of Manila’s “street kids”.
* Pope Francis must promptly demand (1) that officials release these children from jails immediately, (2) that Church, government and business leaders help these children more, and (3) that his bishops stop pumping the high Filipino birthrate by opposing access to affordable and effective contraception options from poor couples that seek it. Otherwise, Pope Francis’ preferential option for the poor is just another pious papal platitude, no?
* Pope Francis has considerable clout in the Philippines, which is over 80% Catholic, unlike the smaller minority Catholic populations in Sri Lanka and South Korea where he recently visited. The Philippines is both the main Vatican outpost in Asia, and a rising regional economic factor, according to colleagues of Francis’ key adviser, Peter Sutherland of Goldman Sachs.
* Asia appears to be Pope Francis’ new frontier and likely also where much of the world’s power and money are heading in the next few decades. Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reportedly recently said, “Asia is one of Francis’ priorities.”
* The Philippine’s wealth, however, is increasingly very unevenly distributed. This is a growing political and social problem that has been exacerbated by the Philippines’ comparatively high birth rate, especially among Catholics, which helps explain the large population of “street kids”.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.