Our personal roles in the scandal of poverty

Yes, the state of massive poverty in our country is a social scandal. The recent Pastoral Exhortation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) signed for all the bishops by the body’s present president, Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas, D.D., of Lingayen-Dagupan, points out the severity of the problem. It reminds readers of the corruption in government that contributes to the failure to solve the poverty problem.

“While we gratefully recognize advances in Philippine society in such areas as basic education, fundamental aspects of the economy, the struggle for elusive peace in Mindanao, the war against corruption, and in all the shameful slime uncovered in connection with the now unconstitutional Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), we cannot help but admit with Pope Francis that twenty-eight percent of our people still ‘are barely living from day to day.’ The poorest of our people are in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao with 47% of the people living below the poverty threshold of PHP 5,458 pesos/month, in Region XII and Region IX with 38% and 37% respectively of the populations still living in absolute poverty. The income gap between our rich and poor has not closed: the richest ten percent of our population is earning ten times more than the poorest ten percent, with the income of the richest families soaring way beyond the income of the poorest. These are figures that have not yet captured the devastation wrought by the standoff in Zamboanga, the earthquake in Bohol, and Typhoon Yolanda in the Visayas,” the exhortation says.