Sunday Reflections

Presentation in the Temple, Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1671

 Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest [Web Gallery of Art]

 
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

The above include alternative First and Second readings and Responsorial Psalms for Year B. This Gospel is always read in Year B.

Gospel Luke 2:22-40 [or Luke 2:22, 39-40]  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, the parents of Jesus brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord [(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
    according to your word;
 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,  a light for revelation to the Gentiles
    and for glory to your people Israel.”  And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.  Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,  then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.] When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.  The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

The text in [square brackets] may be omitted.

Before Christmas we listened to the words of St Matthew: Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:18-21). 

Joseph, by obeying God’s messenger and by naming the Son his wife Mary bore, became the legal father of Jesus. The Church honours him above all as the Husband of Mary. St John XXIII added the words and blessed Joseph, her Spouseto the Roman Canon, now also known as the First Eucharistic Prayer, while Pope Francis has included that phrase in the other three main Eucharistic Prayers. It was as the Husband of Mary that St Joseph took care of her and of Jesus. It was St Joseph whom Jesus knew asDad/Papa/Tatay. It was from St Joseph that Jesus, God who became Man, learned, in his humanity, to grow into manhood.

St Joseph submitted his whole being, as did his wife Mary, to doing God’s will. Jesus was flesh of her flesh, but not of his. Yet he loved Jesus as if he was his own son, first of all by loving his mother.

The Census at Bethlehem (detail) Pieter Bruegel the Elder,1566

 Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels [Web Gallery of Art]

 
Peter Bruegel the Elder, maybe the first major painter to focus on the lives of ordinary people, captures the quiet responsibility of St Joseph, leading the donkey on which the heavily pregnant Mary is riding. The picture above is a detail of the full painting that I used on Christmas Eve. Bruegel has transposed Bethlehem to a village in the Netherlands in the middle of winter. He captures the reality that the Holy Family were ‘nobodies’. None of the people around notices them. They too are caught up in the red tape of their day, having to travel long distances to have their names registered.

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout in the Presentation in the Temple shows St Joseph as a man who is somewhat shy, not wanting to be in the limelight, but standing protectively over Mary as she kneels before Jesus held in the arms of Simeon, with Anna the Prophetess in the background. St Joseph here reminds me very much of my own father.

And in the video of the Presentation what strikes me is that St Joseph is the one carrying Jesus. But before he hands the infant to Simeon he quietly asks Mary’s permission to do so. Mary hands Jesus back to Joseph after receiving him from Simeon and it is St Joseph, as head of the Holy Family, who presents the infant to the priest who offers him to God. The priest has no idea who this child of poor parents really is.

On 17 November Pope Francis said: It is necessary to insist on the fundamental pillars that govern a nation: its intangible assets. The family is the foundation of co-existence and a guarantee against social fragmentation. Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s growth and emotional development. This is why, in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I stressed the ‘indispensable’ contribution of marriage to society, a contribution which ‘transcends the feelings and momentary needs of the couple’ (n. 66). And this is why I am grateful to you for the emphasis that your colloquium has placed on the benefits that marriage can provide children, the spouses themselves, and society.

There have always been children who have grown up without one or both parents. In the Bible they are seen as young persons in need of special care from the wider community. I have known many single parents, some of them widowed, raising their children lovingly and heroically. But this is not the norm.

Incredibly, many within the last two or three decades have come to dismiss the importance of husband/father and wife/mother, have come to dismiss the conception and birth of children in the way that God intended.

Pope Francis with a young recovering addict

 World Youth Day 2013, Rio de Janeiro [Wikipedia]

 
Though without a family of my own I have for many years experienced the title ‘Father’ as a call to be one in a number of senses: a ‘spiritual father’ who leads others to our Heavenly Father through his Son Jesus Christ, and a father-figure to young persons who may have lost their father or who may even have been abused by their father or by other fatherly figures in whom they should have been able to trust.

As a man, I see today’s Feast of the Holy Family to be a call especially to us men to be like St Joseph, to be responsible, to be loving; if married to love our wives above all, if not, to be like fathers to young persons who come into our lives in whatever way and for whatever reason.

As a priest I am grateful to God for calling me not only to be ‘Father’ but to be a father to many in the sense that St Joseph was truly a father to Jesus.

 

Some Christmas Songs

Good King Wenceslas

This English Christmas carol, very popular also in Ireland, is hardly known at all in the Philippines.

In Dulce Jubilo

The melody of this carol goes back at least to 1400. It is sung here by Libera, a London-based boys’ choir.

by Fr Shay Cullen

Mocking of Christ, Vecellio Tiziano, 1570-75

Art Museum, Saint Louis, USA [Web Gallery of Art]

Who would ever imagine that a secret torture squad attached to the Philippine National Police would use a crudely made wheel of fortune to select the torture technique they would use on their victims? Torture is outlawed by international convention and the Philippine Penal Code yet in 2009 a special law Republic Act 9745 was passed to totally ban it. However, it is still common practice. The recently launched investigative report by Amnesty International stated that police torture ‘is commonplace in the Philippines and impunity for it is the norm . . .’ Titled ‘Above the Law: Police Torture in the Philippines’, the Amnesty International researchers with local human rights defenders uncovered secret detention centers and the notorious ‘Wheel of Fortune’ in a torture chamber in Laguna, south of Manila.

The shocking discovery indicated that this trained squad used torture for a sordid and sick kind of entertainment. While the suspects screamed through their gags from the excruciating pain of electric shock the torturers laughed.

The US senate report on torture and disappearances of suspects details shocking torture and abuse and many of the torture techniques detailed in the report are similar to what the Philippine Police use also. The Philippine Police trained in Fort Bragg and elsewhere in the USA may have learned their torture techniques from their US trainers. We sincerely hope not.

As many as 43 prisoner survivors, some rescued by Filipino human rights campaigners who risk their lives to help the victims, said they suffered grave torture. 23 of them were courageous and defiant enough to file criminal charges against the police.

There is not much hope either among them that justice will ever be seen. The police enjoy a high level of impunity. Death squads also murder suspects. They are set up by military and local mayors, governors and other powerful politicians to protect their interests, eliminate political rivals or protect their secret criminal enterprise from take-over by a rival. They also sow terror among the people and ensure the reelection of the politician.

In May this year Human Rights Watch published a 71-page report titled ‘One Shot to the Head: Death Squad Killings in Tagum City, Philippines’. It documented interviews with the killers who said they received text messages from the former mayor about whom to kill and when. They got paid as little as a hundred dollars. This week on 11 December we honor Rogelio Butalid, a broadcast commentator, shot at point blank range outside his radio station in Tagum City, Mindanao, just one of many journalist murders over the past ten years by death squads.

No one has been held responsible or accountable for the many deaths. Human rights advocates are calling for a law to hold the local mayors responsible and blame-worthy. They will be penalized by being removed from office for gross incompetence and dereliction of duty for torture and death squad killings in their town or city.

The Amnesty International report on torture is no less horrific. It reports that with the help of local human rights defenders and advocates they interviewed as many as 55 torture victim-survivors, 21 of them were children when abused and tortured. Two victims of torture were then shot and left for dead but miraculously survived.

As many as 36 cases were referred to the Office of the Ombudsman but unsurprisingly none were indicted. The investigating officers were likely to have been threatened with a ‘shot to the head’.

The survivors of torture reported having been beaten, kicked, punched, water-boarded (a near drowning torture technique), nearly suffocated with plastic bags over their heads, given electric shocks, deprived of sleep and forced to take stressful physical squatting. In one videotape, one old man was seen naked with wire tied around his genitalia being pulled by a police officer. The victim was later found beheaded.

Children too have been tortured, starved and killed in jails and prisons that are renamed ‘Juvenile Homes’ where the children are neglected, abused, mistreated and jailed behind bars and metal screens.

A shocking and horrible photo of abused children was taken in the Manila Reception Action Center (RAC), a place described as an Auschwitz-like concentration camp in the heart of Manila five minutes from the office of the Mayor. The photo is that of a boy we named Francisco. His naked, emaciated skeletal body was left thrown on the ground, allegedly left to die without medical help. He was found with facial bruises when rescued by charity workers.

The excuse of the staff is that they had no money to help him, It is difficult not to believe that this is a fabrication. It’s the story line to get more money which is disappearing in mysterious ways and too little going to feed, clothe and support the children. The boy Francisco only had to be given a t-shirt and shorts and taken to the hospital with other children in a similar half-starved condition. The truth is that the money is allegedly misappropriated and the Commission on Audit (COA) need to audit the facility. Also they need a clean, well managed facility in the countryside under the supervision of the trusted office of Secretary Corazon Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Manila is so rich it could build and maintain two such centers.

Other children too were left in similar conditions. The report documents 21 children who were tortured. All this is difficult to read and comprehend how humans can inflict such terrible cruel torture on children and adults. The psychological torture of threats and fear is equally abhorrent. One thing is clear, we cannot remain inactive, silent, non-supportive and indifferent to these grim realities exposed by children’s rights and human rights defenders working with Amnesty International.

The truth is there for all to see and read .We have to act as best we can to save more victims and put an end to these evil practices. We can help by speaking out, joining campaigns for human rights, join a rally, by taking a stand with victims of illegal detention and children in jails. We can inspire others by showing respect for the rights of others. That’s what Jesus did and taught. That’s why we have Christmas.

shaycullen@preda.org

Fr Francis Carey

 (19 August 1937 – 6 December 2014)

‘He had a gentle presence and a kind heart.’ That is how Fr Dan O’Malley, Regional Director of the Columbans in the Philippines, described Fr Francis Carey when he informed the membership of his death on Saturday 6 December. Father Frank was diagnosed with a form of cancer late in October. His death has been a great shock to all who knew him.Father Frank was the son of Paul and Marion Carey and was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He attended a secondary school there run by the Christian Brothers. He received his formation as a Columban in Sassafras, Victoria, and in Wahroonga and Turramurra, New South Wales. He was ordained in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, on 13 December 1962 by Archbishop Ernest Victor Tweedy, at the time the Archbishop Emeritus of Hobart, Tasmania.

St Michael’s Cathedral, Iligan City [Wikipedia]

Christ Healing the Blind, El Greco, 1570-75

 Galleria Nozionale, Parma, Italy [Web Gallery of Art]

Fr Carey’s life as a priest was guided especially by Luke 4:18-19: ‘”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,  because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”’ A friend noted, ‘Even with the ecology it was about healing, reconciling and liberating.’ Luke 4:14-19 was the gospel read at his request at the funeral Mass in Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate, Manila, on 11 December, with the passage Jesus read, Isaiah 61:1-3, as the First Reading.

 This is what guided him when he spent nearly seven years, from 1969 till 1976, in Australia, working as a chaplain to overseas students, promoting the work of Columbans throughout the world and seeking vocations to the missionary priesthood. He could be creatively practical. He once spent a month in an outback parish in Australia and told the people on his first Sunday there that he couldn’t cook and would appreciate it if each day of his stay a different family would invite him to their home for a hot meal. The people were delighted to do so and around 30 families by welcoming this friendly missionary priest learned quite a bit about the work of the Columbans in the Philippines.

On his return to the Philippines in 1976 Father Frank spent nearly a year in the parish of Tambulig, Zamboanga del Sur, before moving to Manila where he was to spend most of the rest of his life, apart from a stint on mission promotion in Australia from 1991 to 1996 in Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales. From 1981 until 1991 he worked with third-level students in Manila, with periods as chaplain in Philippine Women’s University, Far Eastern University, and with Student Catholic Action, which was founded by Columban Fr Edward J. McCarthy in the 1930s.

 Sanctuary, Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate [Wikipedia]

From 1996 till 2002 Father Frank was an assistant priest at Our Lady of Remedies Parish, Malate, Manila. The Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL) and the Eco-Farm Retreat Centre in Silang, Cavite, south of Manila, the brainchild of Columban Fr John Leydon whose vision was shared by Elin Mondejar, the owner of the land where CELL is located. Father Frank was part of this from its early days. This Center demonstrates permaculture and organic farming and zero waste management in place of landfill. Malate Parish was also involved in this project. Fr Dominic Nolan, also from Melbourne and deeply involved in the project for many years, described Father Frank as ‘the glue that kept CELL together.’

A Columban employee who visited CELL in 2009 wrote in an online tribute, ‘Thank you for giving me inspiration in advocating and living a life dedicated to nourishing the earth and everything that God put in it. I remember my short time at CELL, feeling the earth, inhaling the freshness of the surroundings, enjoying the meals that were served to us straight from the lush garden, everything. I will never forget the excitement I saw in your eyes when you munched on some mint leaves just to convince us that these things are actually good and can nourish our bodies.’ This same person, a young married woman, expressed to this writer on hearing of his death, ‘I would have loved to have asked him to adopt me!’ This echoes what St Athanasius wrote in his life of St Anthony the Abbot: ‘And so all the people of the village, and the good men with whom he associated saw what kind of man he was, and they called him “The friend of God”. Some loved him as a son, and others as though he were a brother.’

Faith in Action Keeps it Strong and Alive
Fr Shay Cullen

Children Expecting the Christmas Feast, Ferdinand Theodro Hildebrandt, 1840

The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia [Web Gallery of Art]

Christmas is the celebration of the family, the birth of Jesus and his great mission to lead the world from sin, vice and cruelty to a kingdom where people are free to live a life of virtue and goodness. Here we can be members of God’s family and strive for friendship, justice, love and peace. What a great and beautiful ideal.

The family is under great pressure these days as the cellphone, the internet and social media spread so much negative influences from child pornography, extortion, bullying and sexual grooming and abuse.

Evil has its tentacles wrapped around the minds and hearts of our youth and adults through these technological means of communication. The youth have to be helped to resist and throw off these influences and embrace a life of virtue. Adults too are under great temptation. There is even a website that encourages people to sign up to have an adulterous relationship, designed to destroy families and leave children without united parents.

Yet there are millions of families that are rooted in deep Christian values of love, faithfulness and compassionate concern that help abused, exploited people. But these too are under pressure as society is becoming more secular, frivolous and prone to vice, materialism, corruption and crime.

Love as a spiritual experience of unselfish friendship is hard to find these days. Today they are easily overwhelmed by the selfish satisfaction of personal desires, greed and lust. The great ideal of service of others through volunteering without asking for payment, rewards, praise and entitlements is diminishing. The age when thousands of young people answered the call to dedicate their lives to the service of the poor and the downtrodden is coming to an end. The age of the cheater, swindler, manipulator, betrayer and unfaithful is here.

Those who strive to lead a good and virtuous life have to strengthen their belief in eternal goodness and the sanctity of life, love, family and true faithful friends. Goodness abounds but it is not organized into a strong movement that could overwhelm the march of evil and corrupt practices of injustice and torture and abuse. The silence of good people has given a kind of consent to the triumph of evil in today’s world. As Jesus said, we have to shout it from the roof tops and take a principled stand for what is right and just.

The enemy of the people is clearly seen in the corruption, graft, kickbacks and plunder of the people’s taxes by dynastic families. The bad example from leaders permeates society and corrupts all around it. Justice is tainted and criminals go free. The incompetence of corrupt governance is apparent everywhere.

The recent expose of beaten and starving naked children lying on the cement ground like the victims of Auschwitz at the Manila children’s detention center called RAC (Reception and Action Center) caused outrage but not enough. The children photographed looked like the skeletal victims of Auschwitz. I wrote about them recently and the horrors they endured. The social workers, managers and those sworn to help them allegedly betrayed the children and their profession. Allegations of pilfered money needed for the children’s food abound but are denied. Unqualified, underpaid staff are part of the abuse. The case of Francisco is just one of many examples of starved and tortured children as revealed this week by Amnesty International in Manila. Several of the victims of torture mentioned in the report (see www.preda.org ) were interviewed in the safety of the Preda Foundation’s children’s home for rescued children in Olongapo City.

When I came as a Columban Missionary from Ireland to the Philippines 45 years ago, I saw this terrible hardship of the children in jail. I set up Preda Foundation to give them a new, happier life and try to end the torture and abuse. It seems we saved hundreds but have failed, so far, to change the systematic abuse of jailed children, illegal as it is.

In the Preda homes, children are recovering from their traumatic abuse and have told their stories of torture to researchers from Amnesty International. Most of the children were rescued by Preda social workers and myself from government detention jails. Readers can help save many more.

Social services and NGOs have not remained untouched. Some have fallen into the darkness of selfish gain, dishonesty, unfaithfulness and greed. They abandon too easily and too quickly the values they vowed loudly to uphold and defend. The malaise of the world of selfishness and greed has damaged and led astray even some of those that once worked for the higher causes of defending human rights, helping the poor and restoring the dignity of the abused.

It’s no wonder that faithful, virtuous good men and women are treasures to society, the hope of the nation and the true defenders of human rights and abused children. We can oppose and defeat evil by being faithful, honest, generous, kind, respectful of all and put our faith into action and keep it strong by serving and helping needy children this Christmas and always. 

shaycullen@preda.org, www.preda.org

Nativity (Holy Night), Corregio, 1528-30

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany [Web Gallery of Art]

Fr Francis Carey

(19 August 1937 – 6 December 2014)

Fr Frank Carey died in hospital in Manila on Saturday 6 December at 6:20pm. He had been diagnosed with a form of cancer in October. His death is a great shock to all of us. Fr Dan O’Malley, Regional Director of the Columbans in the Philippines, said of him, He had a gentle presence and a kind heart. Many would describe him in those or similar words.

Father Frank is being waked at St Columban’s, 1854 Singalong Street, Manila, until Wednesday at 4pm when his remains will be taken to Remedios Jubilee Center, Malate, Manila, for the vigil. The funeral Mass will be on Thursday at  10:45am in Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate, followed by burial in Loyola Memorial Park, Sucat, Parañaque City.

The following appeared in the November-December 2012 issue of The Far East, the magazine of the Columbans in Australia and New Zealand, to mark the Golden Jubilee of the ordination to the priesthood of Father Frank.

Fr Francis (Frank) Carey was ordained by the Archbishop Tweedy of Hobart on December 13, 1962 in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Victoria. He arrived in the Philippines in September 1963.

He has spent most of his 50 years of priesthood in the Philippines. He also spent some years of service in Australia as chaplain to overseas students, vocations Co-ordinator and doing mission promotion and education in the dioceses of Rockhampton, Canberra/Goulburn and Armidale.

In 1996, Fr Francis was a Co-founder of the Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL) and the Eco-Farm Retreat Centre outside Manila. This Centre demonstrates permaculture and organic farming and zero waste management in place of landfill.

Fr Francis is the son of Paul and Marion Carey, of Melbourne, Victoria. He trained for the priesthood in Sassafras, Victoria, and Wahroonga and Turramurra, NSW.

He currently resides in the Filipino mountain city of Baguio. 

May Father Frank rest in peace.

An obituary will be posted later.

The Universal Desire for Justice.

By Fr Shay Cullen

MV Sewol, 16 April 2014 [Wikipedia]

Seoul, Korea.

It was frosty cold standing in the center Island of the broad avenue in Seoul, Korea, leading to the historical palace and presidential house. There I met one of the grieving parents of the Korean ferry,MV Sewol, disaster. There is a protest encampment set up there where supporters and sympathizers come and stay and pray and demand justice for the families and victims of this terrible tragedy. There is a high sense and awareness of human rights and frequent democratic protests are held here in Seoul. But all are allowed to demonstrate continuously, peacefully or noisily without police crackdowns.

At the solidarity camp on the traffic island the father of a student who was killed in the sinking of the ferry boat told me through an interpreter how the parents cannot accept the inaction of government. They want government to redress fully the injustice and the terrible wrong behind the sinking of the ferry and the loss of so many young people and adults. He handed me a solidarity badge, a yellow folded ribbon. The high school students who died look out from the assembled 300 photographs at the temporary shrine to their memory. Their silent stares tell us of the enormity of their loss and greatness of the crime.

The MV Sewol, on 16 April 2014, sank with a complement of 500 passengers and crew. The ferry  was bought from a Japanese ferry company with only two years of life left as a passenger ferry but the shipping company used questionable methods to force through a change in the law so the ferry could get a license to carry passengers beyond its normal life. Together with illegal structural alterations to carry more cargo, the ferry was top-heavy and capsized. The Captain and some  of the crew have been jailed and the family of the owner are being arrested and charged. Justice is the overwhelming desire of the families of the students who died. 

MV Doña Paz [Wikipedia]

In the Philippines justice is hard to come by. As many as 4,386 Filipinos perished in the greatest peacetime maritime disaster ever when the MV Doña Paz, a ferry boat, owned by Sulpicio Lines, out of Tacloban, Leyte, sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on 20 December 1987.  Only 24 people survived. The ship was way over its seaworthy life and built for 608 passengers.

The ship was rebuilt after a fire, unlicensed, grossly overloaded and had no qualified captain or officer on duty on the bridge when the collision occurred leading to the deaths of thousands. The Philippine Board of Marine Inquiry eventually cleared Sulpicio Lines of all liability, fault and negligence for the accident stopping short of sympathizing with the owners of the shipping line.

No one was arrested, tried or found guilty of negligence or held responsible for the deaths of so many. Everything is negotiable in the Philippines if you are rich and powerful. Little compensation was paid to the family members of 4,386 people who perished.

The families of the 162 victims who died and 93 severely burned people of a Manila disco fire had to wait 18 years and eight months to get justice this past week. Small as it is with the sentences of seven Quezon City engineers and two businessmen to ten years each. Philippine Justice is hard to come by. All is negotiable except for the poor.

Last week a child, Angie, from Botolan, Zambales  with the mental capacity of nine year old, as testified by the resolution of the prosecutor Emelyn T. Nacin-Catolico in April  2011,  had been cruelly raped with fear and threats  by a pedophile and the case referred to the Regional Trial Court in Iba, Zambales.

Now three years later a new prosecutor, Olivia V.Non-Finones, instead of prosecuting the rapist pressured the child to sign an affidavit withdrawing her compliant. Such an affidavit of desistance is forbidden by order the Philippine Department of Justice and the Supreme Court has ruled many times that such affidavits of desistance have no weight whatsoever.

Nevertheless the judge, Marifi P.Chua, accepted the affidavit in court and stated in dismissing the rape charge against the accused that since the affidavit was based on the fact the rapist undertook  and promised not to rape again, the female judge dismissed the case and the accused  was allowed to walk free to do it again. The child was denied justice and more children are at risk.

Here in Seoul many welcome the UN resolution, approved by 111 countries, to send the leaders of North Korea to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity. Investigations and interviews with escapees from repressive North Korea led to a special UN report in February 2014 that provides evidence for the allegations of the crimes of systematic murders, torture, beatings, starvation, rape, forced abortions and unjust imprisonment of up to 120,000 people.

These issues and revelations have given an increased sense of obligation among the many South Koreans to do more to help  the less fortunate in North Korea and in developing countries. The desire for justice is universal and a nation without it is not a fully civilized nation but close to a failed state. 

This is perhaps why South Koreans are embracing and expanding their interest in social justice and buying Fair Trade products from developing nations like the Philippines dried mangos fo small farmers and the indigenous people.  They have a growing moral conscience about the exploitation of  the poor and the duty to help.

Fair trade is a rapidly growing sector in civil society and among Christians in many countries. The UK, Ireland, Germany and Austria are among the most active. The movement in Seoul has a strong supporter in Mayor Won Soon Park who  hosted in Seoul The Global Social Economic Forum this month to boost the social commitment of Koreans and foster international cooperation and Fair Trade. All of us can do our share to help make justice the heart of  faith and life.

shaycullen@preda.org, www.preda.org, www.predafairtrade.net