DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/10 July) – They came and occupied all the pews of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral at 12 noon, many of them in red. Those who didn’t wear red wore red ribbons as armbands or pinned them on their shirts. Red ribbons were also tied around the iron -wrought fence and gate of the church.
“We are not here to dramatize our pains, our anger, our outrage,” Fr. Edwin de Gracia, assistant parish priest, said as soon as the entrance song, “Let there be peace on earth” ended.
“We are here to manifest our oneness as a loving and peaceful church and to express our sympathy to the victims of the tragedy last Sunday. We simply pray for them and pray for peace,” he said.
Elsewhere in the city, in the mosques during the sambayang at noon, de Gracia would later say, Muslim religious leaders condemned Sunday’s bombing that left six persons dead and 30 others injured.
De Gracia, who wore red vestments and stole, led 20 other priests clad in white in the concelebrated mass.
He spoke of a “peaceful, prayerful, communal action” and pointed to the color red as symbolizing not only the blood of those who died but also to symbolize “love” and “stop.”
“Stop terrorism. Stop the kidnappings,” he said. Streamers bearing similar messages were displayed outside the city’s stores, restaurants, most of them opting to close shop this Friday.
The lone mall, South Seas, also closed shop.
The business sector had earlier expected President Arroyo to arrive Friday but the visit did not push through. The business sector wanted to tell Ms Arroyo through the closing of stores, that they are “sick and tired of kidnappings, hold up, bombings, carnap, killings, etc…”
Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, the parish priest, is presently out of town, attending a retreat of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) which he served twice as President.
Quevedo was concluding his homily on priests and prophecy at about 8:40 morning of Sunday, July 5 at the Cathedral when an improvised explosive device went off at the Elsie Omega lechon and pork house on the street across from the cathedral.
Quevedo, also parish priest of the Cathedral, sent de Gracia an 11-paragraph pastoral letter Thursday night to be read at the mass today. The letter is titled, “I share the grief of our people and express their righteous demand for justice.”
The archbishop said today’s mass is being celebrated to “express our grief and solidarity with all the victims and to pray for peace.”
“We pray for peace, for that lasting peace that only the Lord can give, admittedly through our human cooperation,” he said.
Quevedo urged everyone to pray “for the cessation of conflict and violence” and that “dialogue for peace” could take place and “that the thousands of people languishing in evacuation camps could return safely to their homes.”
“Only respectful dialogue that responds to the root cause of violence and injustice can bear the fruit of lasting peace in our society,” he said.
The archbishop said the maiming and killing of innocent people “is a heinous crime that cries out to heaven.”
“With criminal intent, a bomb was fabricated and planted, exploding in a meat shop, a public place, killing, maiming, and mutilating! And from across a sacred place and on a scared day when hundreds of people gathered to worship our God of Peace and Love, our God who commanded, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
Quevedo said all religions that he know abhor such criminal violence. “No motive, political or economic or ideological, can ever justify such killings,” hence, “in the strongest terms, I condemn this inhuman and unconscionable act of murder so senseless and so indiscriminate.”
He appealed to authorities – local, regional and national – “to expedite the identification, arrest, and detention of the perpetrators.”
“I ask for the full force of the law to be applied justly on them. Yet I also pray that such murderers would return to their right conscience and turn away from such crimes,” he said.
Quevedo also appealed to “all political individuals and groups and to members of civil society to refrain from unfounded speculations in order to gain political and ideological leverage.
“Exploiting the tragedy and the grief of families whose members were victims of horrendous crime is certainly insensitive and irresponsible,” he added.
He also urged the public to “pray for the speedy recovery of the injured” and “for the eternal repose of the souls of those who were murdered.”
“With their families, we grieve deeply and ask the Lord for comfort and strength. We commit ourselves to pray and work for peace in the many little ways that we can, individually and communally. I appeal to all people of good will to do the same. Finally, we entrust our hopes and efforts for peace into the hands of our God of Peace, that he, in his eternal wisdom, may grant our fervent prayer,” Quevedo wrote. (Carolyn O. Arguillas/MindaNews)
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