A leading Philippine churchman said that addressing migration and poverty is essential to building a Church that truly serves the marginalized.
Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, stressed the need to develop solid foundations that recognize and respect the dignity of poor people.
“If the poor don’t come to Church, the Church must go to the poor,” David said during a press conference after Saturday’s session.
Considered one of the prominent Asian voices at the ongoing synod, he highlighted a major challenge facing the Philippines: local migration.
According to him, this internal movement is rapidly changing the demographics of many dioceses, especially those near urban centers.
Using the Diocese of Imus, near Manila, as an example, he pointed out that the population surged from 1.5 million to 4 million in just a decade.
This shift, he explained, presents a “big challenge” to traditional parish structures, which typically “serve only the original residents living close to the city center.”
In many cases, migrants from rural provinces feel disconnected from the Church, contributing to the emergence of informal settlements, added David, who is also the incoming vice president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC).
Following Pope Francis’ call to “go to the peripheries,” David said they took this challenge “very seriously because we could not get the local migrants to enter our parishes.”
“They are sort of alienated from the traditional parishes,” according to him. “So we decided to go out to them.”
The decision, he added, led to the creation of 20 mission stations in his diocese, which he described as the “Church’s presence among the poorest of the poor.”
David said the move is transforming parishes from “maintenance to mission,” as they focus on spreading the faith to the fringes of society.
“It has been a wonderful pastoral experience that has largely been profoundly affirmed in the past three years by this Synod on Synodality,” David said.
The month-long summit of global Catholic leaders will be the second and final global assembly, culminating the discernment phase of the synod.
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