San Carlos Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, on behalf of the Visayas Clergy Discernment Group (VCDG),   called for an  end  to corruption and the abolition of the pork barrel system yesterday.

“We are one in the call that the welfare of our people, especially the poor, must be held supreme”, Alminaza said,  on the 116th Independence Day of the country.

“All of us must continually work for genuine freedom, so that all peoples will have the fullness of life,”  he said.

For a society without justice is not really free, he added.

Alminaza, in behalf of the bishops and priests of the VCDG,  said they  join the Filipino nation in the celebration of the 116th anniversary of the victory of Filipino heroism against foreign tyranny and oppression.

The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines has declared this year as the Year of the Laity, in which the laity are called to: “Choose to be Brave: Called to be Saints, Send Forth as Heroes!”, he said.

“A fitting way to celebrate our freedom from Spanish Colonization is the commitment to genuine human liberation or integral salvation, where all peoples have life in its fullness”, he said.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines  Pastoral Exhortation for the 2014 Year of the Laity called on everyone, especially the laity, to address these situations which are not pleasing to God: dehumanizing poverty, graft and corruption, greed for power and money, and ignoring the common good, Alminaza said.

The CBCP reminds us, “The renewal of our country thus demands of us all, and especially of our lay faithful, a return to truthfulness and the fostering of the sense of the common good”, he said.

The bishops and priests of the VCDG, believe that an organized and empowered people will be able to get rid of an elite politics, thus achieving genuine democracy, he added.*CPG

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