Priest asks: Where’s the moral outcry for life?
Fr. Amado Picardal, CSsR
MANILA, July 13, 2016— Amid the rising death toll of drug-related violence, a Catholic priest said what is more alarming is the public silence against extrajudicial killings.
Redemptorist Fr. Amado Picardal, a known human rights advocate, said the problem is unlikely to stop because “there is no moral outcry” for life.
“It is not only the killings but the reaction of the citizens, majority of them are Catholic,” Father Picardal said over Radio Veritas.
“Others are quiet or they approve of it, the thing is justified until a member of their families are included and that is my worry that (killings) will not stop because there is no outcry from the citizens,” he said.
More than a hundred suspected illegal drug pushers and users have already been killed in less than a month.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines earlier expressed alarm at a sharp increase in police killings of suspected criminals since.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas, CBCP President, said signs of vigilantism and the offering of bounties for criminals are “equally disturbing.”
Father Picardal warned that the lack of public outcry and the seeming normality of summary executions will only make the problem worse.
“If this will continue and this will worsen, I think there is madness that is happening in our country today,” he said. (Ysabel Nicole Hilado/CBCPNews)