PHILIPPINES
Manila Standard Today
By Manila Standard Today | Jan. 05, 2015
PASAY City says it plans to hide away unsightly street children during the visit of Pope Francis this month, highlighting the hypocrisy, myopia and the wrong headedness that characterize our urban policies.
The ostensive reason for the campaign, says Pasay Social Welfare Department head Rosalinda Orobia, is to prevent syndicates that employ these children as beggars and street vendors, from taking advantage of the Pope’s compassion for the poor.
The notion insults our intelligence and suggests that the Pope is somehow too naïve to understand how criminal syndicates in major cities around the world shamelessly use destitute children to turn an illegal and immoral profit.
We all understand the natural tendency to put one’s best foot forward when guests come calling, but hiding away poor street children completely misses the point of the Pope’s apostolic exhortation to “hear the cry of the poor.”
“Seeing their poverty, hearing their cries and knowing their sufferings,” the Pope said, “we are scandalized because we know that there is enough food for everyone and that hunger is the result of a poor distribution of goods and income.”
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