Dagupan archbishop issues call for prayer, action vs corruption

DAGUPAN CITY – Msgr. Oscar Cruz, head of the Lingayen-Dagupan Archdiocese, issued yesterday a call for prayer and action because of "unresolved detailed accusations of serious corruption reaching the highest public office of the land."

Cruz, former president of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), enjoined Pangasinenses to join a rally on Oct. 28 from the St. John Parish grounds to the city plaza to call for the resignation or impeachment of President Estrada.

On Oct. 26, a children’s rosary hour will be held in Catholic schools and churches to pray for national peace and unity.

The following day, there will be a youth eucharistic celebration in schools, chapels and churches, to be coordinated by the Archdiocesan Youth Apostolate and Campus Ministry, to call for integrity in public office.

In issuing the call for prayer and action, Cruz said, "How we wish that everything were all right in our country, all in order and in peace."

But the archbishop added that Filipinos could not just remain silent and merely watch from a distance "when we see gambling lords and drug traffickers remain above the law, when we (see) tax evaders, squanderers of public funds and destroyers of our natural resources, among others, escape the bar of justice."

Earlier, Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin called on President Estrada to resign amid serious accusations by Ilocos Sur Gov. Chavit Singson, a long-time friend, of being on the take from jueteng operations in the country. Meanwhile, five persons were arrested during a police raid on a jueteng den in Barangay Poblacion West, Alcala town last Saturday afternoon.

The five were identified as Reynaldo Garcia, 36; Sonny Diva, 25; Rosito Rosalia, 45; Victorino Ng, 55; and Emily Tabula, 35.

Malacañang ordered an all-out war against jueteng after it suspended the Bingo-2 Ball, the so-called "legalized jueteng," in the aftermath of Singson’s exposé. – With Cesar Ramirez