DAVAO CITY — The country’s Catholic bishops adopted during its recent plenary assembly the Mindanao Catholic Bishops’ statement on the peace process and the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) that they want and do not want.
“We do not intend to endorse or not to endorse any draft BBL being discussed by the Philippine Senate and the House of Representatives. But we intend to envision a BBL that is based on and guided by social moral principles,” the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said in its statement dated July 11, “Striving for a Just Peace, the Moral Road.”
The CBCP noted that Christianity and Islam are religions of peace; that the vast majority of Muslim, Christian, and Indigenous People communities in Mindanao aspire for peace; and that all-out war is not the answer to the Mindanao situation.
The Bishops said the BBL they envision on the basis of social moral principles of social justice, harmony and peace “goes beyond the proposals now being discussed in our legislature.”
Mindanao has 27 provinces and 33 cities. The proposed core territory of the Bangsamoro, the new autonomous political entity that the government (GPH) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) had agreed upon in 2012 to replace the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm) by 2016, comprises five provinces and four cities with a predominantly Muslim population.
The Catholic Church in the Philippines has 86 ecclesiastical territories, 21 of which are in Mindanao, four of them within the proposed Bangsamoro: the Archdiocese of Cotabato, Prelature of Marawi, Vicariate of Jolo and the Prelature of Isabela in Basilan. (MindaNews)
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