16 May 2020
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, and Reverend Administrators,
Greetings of the Lord’s peace!
This year we celebrate the 5th year of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si On Care for our Common Home, with the theme, “Everything is Connected.” We celebrate Laudato Si’ Week, not just to remember this significant church document but also to articulate its achievements and challenges. And during this COVID-19 crisis, we also take note of how the spread of infectious disease is very much related to the destruction of the habitat in our ecosystems.
In July 2019, we, in the Catholic Bishop Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) released our Pastoral Letter: An Urgent Call for Ecological Conversion, Hope in the Face of Climate Emergency. As we commemorate the anniversary of Laudato Si, we need to continue our initiatives and accomplish the action points we committed to do to protect our common home.
Our Episcopal Commission on Social Action – Justice and Peace (ECSA-JP), having tasked to take lead in Laudato Si campaign, have continued to work with the other Commissions and our partner dioceses in pursuing the actions points enumerated in our Pastoral Letter on Ecology and Climate emergency.
In celebration of Laudato Si Anniversary, and in continuation of our ecological advocacies, we would like to invite you and your Social Action Center to join and engage in the following activities for which we need you can support and active participation:
- On May 20, 2020, as part of Laudato Si Week celebration, we are launching in our website the NASSA/Caritas PH Green Initiatives. This is a concept note outlining our major campaigns focusing on food security, divestment from coal and Rights of Nature. We will have the launch through an online forum in Greenfaith FB channel. The document can be accessed from our website, with this link: https://www.nassa.org.ph/ecological-campaigns/
- Simultaneously in the same online forum, we will also launch our E-book entitled, “Greening Our Communities.” The booklet is a compilation of illustrated reflections and guidelines on how to live the spirit of Laudato Si through grassroots and community actions. We make this booklet available from our website, with this link: https://www.nassa.org.ph/ecological-campaigns/
- As part of our campaign to pass the bill on Rights of Nature, we are happy to announce that we were able to file the bill both in the Congress and the Senate. We need your support. It will make a big impact if you can lobby your respective Representatives in the House to support the bill, even just to write them a letter, just as what Bishop Alberto Uy did. The letter can be used as a template, and it can just be downloaded from our website: https://www.nassa.org.ph/ecological-campaigns/
- ECSA-JP is a convenor of Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM). We have a separate invitation for you for an online forum on divestment on May 20, 2020, with Bp. Broderick Pabillo and Bp. Gerry Alminaza as guests. Breaking from coal dependency is one major call of Laudato Si. We initially identified BPI as a low hanging fruit that we can lobby. We have a briefer on this campaign, including a template letter to BPI that you can just sign. The documents are available from our web, with this link: https://www.nassa.org.ph/ecological-campaigns/
- Lastly, on our food security campaign, we need to underline the need to address poverty by ensuring sufficient food supply for the poor. This has become particularly clear during this COVID pandemic. As I have underlined in one of my media interviews: “The present crisis brought by Covid-19 compels us to ensure that each Filipino family is secured with ample supply of basic food requirement and this can only be provided if the agriculture sector is given priority. It’s about time we strengthen our programs on food security, providing the needed support to farmers and fisherfolk who remain until this time, the poorest sector in the country.” To this end, we would like to encourage our diocesan social action centers (DSAC) to aggressively pursue the promotion of community or family farming. We have good experiences and practices in many dioceses that we can replicate. These experiences are compiled and are available from our website, through this link: https://www.nassa.org.ph/ecological-campaigns/
We hope that with your support and committed actions we recommended above, we can really move forward to put our faith into action vis-à-vis the ever changing “new normal” that brings further misery to the poor, and further threatens our common home.
Sincerely in our Lord,
+ Jose Colin Bagaforo, D.D.
Chair, Episcopal Commission on Social Action – Justice and Peace (ECSA-JP)
