Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, the head of the Philippine bishops’ conference, urged Catholic lawmakers on Sept. 14 not to support “any attempt to restore the death penalty” and called on Catholic lawyers to “study the issue and to oppose” it by filing legal cases against it. Less than a week after Rodrigo Duterte was sworn into office as president of the Philippines, a staunch political ally and the new speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, Pantaleon Álvarez of Davao del Norte, filed a proposal to reinstate the death penalty. Duterte ran, and won by a large margin, on a platform of ridding the country of criminals by having them killed and encouraging the public to kill them. He has repeatedly called for the death penalty to be reinstated and, in early September, again urged the Philippine Congress to pass the bill. Since Duterte took office on June 30, more than 3,400 people accused of drug dealing or addiction have died at the hands of law enforcement and private citizens.
Duterte Seeks Revived Death Sentence
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”
Many have questioned how so many Latinos could support a candidate like DonaldTrump, who promised restrictive immigration policies. “And the answer is that, of course, Latinos are complicated people.”
Catholic voters were a crucial part of Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president. But did misogyny and a resistance to women in power cause Catholic voters to disregard the common good?