Philippine Church group to
divest from non-green industries
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| A waterway in a shanty town in the Philippine capital Manila clogged with garbage (AFP) |
In harmony with the 'Laudato Si’ Week' marking the 5th
anniversary of Pope Francis' encyclical, a section of the Catholic Church in
the Philippines has vowed to halt investing in sectors detrimental to the
environment.
By Robin Gomes
A group of Philippine bishops and religious congregations
have issued a declaration pledging to halt the use of church assets to finance
fossil fuel industries, such as coal, that harm the environment.
Among those who signed the May 21 declaration are officials
from the Archdiocese of Manila, the Diocese of San Carlos in the Visayas
region, members of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the
Philippines and the Augustinian Missionaries.
In his May 24, 2015 encyclical, "Laudato Si', on Care
for Our Common Home", Pope Francis wanted to stir inspiration and passion
among religious and secular groups to care for the environment and to address
current ecological crises.
Dirty coal
The declaration says that “coal, the dirtiest of all fossil
fuels and the single biggest contributor to the climate emergency, goes against
everything that the Church stands for (…) especially the preservation of the
life and dignity of the human person and the care for God’s creation”.
It also says that the Covid-19 pandemic and climate emergency
are both calls to bring about a “better world.”
Bishop Pabillo
Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, the Apostolic
Administrator of Manila Archdiocese, who is a staunch advocate of the
environment, has described the use of coal as “not cheap” as Filipinos pay
dearly in other ways.
“Sadly, the well-being of the people is rarely considered in
economies where the priority is economic growth. As long as business and
government policies value profit over people, coal dependence will continue to
prosper,” Bishop Pabillo wrote recently on social media.
Bishop Alminaza
Another signatory to the May 21 declaration is Bishop
Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlo, an ardent advocate of clean and affordable
renewable sources of energy.
On the homepage of his diocesan website he has a bold ‘no
entry’ traffic sign with the words “No to Coal”.
Bishop Alminaza has been appealing to Philippine financial
institutions to stop funding the expansion of coal operations in the country
and instead support the development of renewable energy.
“As the fulfilment of their moral obligation, Philippine
banks must have concrete plans to phase out coal finance in the time required
by today’s climate crisis,” Bishop Alminaza said at the 3rd Philippine
Environment Summit held in late February at Cagayan de Oro.
The banks, he said, must have clear policies restricting
their exposure to coal, channelling the funds they divest from it into clean
and affordable renewable energy for all Filipinos.
CBCP - ecological conversion
Last year, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) released a major pastoral letter on “climate emergency”,
urging their communities to ecological conversion, to listen to the cry of the
Earth and the poor and act together to mitigate the ill effects of climate change.
Entitled, “An urgent call for ecological conversion, hope in
the face of climate emergency”, the July 16 pastoral letter by CBCP president,
Archbishop Romulo Valles of Davao, offered a reflection on the state of the
environment, followed by concrete ecological actions.
It was the 8th in a series of environment-related documents
that the Philippine bishops have released over the past 3 decades, since the
publication of the first one in 1988 entitled, “What is Happening to Our
Beautiful Land?”
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