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The bells in Manila Archdiocese will toll eight o’clock every evening to protest against continued killings in the Philippines.
A Catholic priest and a broadcast journalist are the most recent assassins’ victims.
Cardinal Tagle of Manila intensified his condemnation of the killings following the shooting of Catholic priest, Mark Ventura, in the Archdiocese of Tuguegarao.
“The bells beckon us to remember the dead, never to forget them, and to ask God to remember them,” he says.
He says the tolling of the bells will “haunt the perpetrators of violence and killing to remember their victims, never to forget them.”
The prelate invited the faithful to pause, remember and pray for Father Ventura.
Attackers shot and killed him after he’d said Mass in Cagayan province on April 29.
Cardinal Tagle says the bell tolls call everybody to commit to actions of truth, justice, love and respect for God’s gift of human life and dignity.
Cardinal Tagle condemned the murder of Father Ventura. Furthermore, he expressed sadness that some people seem no longer to value life as a gift from God.
“It’s sad that a priest was killed … and even if he’s not a priest, a person. Isn’t he a gift from God? Is it that easy nowadays to just kill and throw someone away?”
Father Ventura, 37, was the second priest killed in four months.
In December killers shot Father Marcelito Paez.
A day after the shooting of Father Ventura, assassins also shot a broadcast journalist.
Edmund Sestoso died in the central Philippine city of Dumaguete.
A local environmental group describes the slain priest as a staunch opponent of mining projects.
The group claims big business and their interests could well be behind his killing.
Father Ventura was among those who opposed black sand mining in the province of Cagayan.
The environmental group says the priest was the 55th environmentalist killed since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power.
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