Filipino Church leaders have called on shrine ministers and promoters to ensure that shrines across the country become homes of faith and genuine encounter, rather than venues for competition, commercialization, or spectacle.
A bishop from the Philippines urged shrine ministers and promotors to transform their parishes into “hospitals of hope,” especially for people struggling with mental health issues.
Representatives of Catholic shrines in the Philippines will gather for a three-day national assembly to be hosted by the Diocese of Malolos in the Province of Bulacan.
In 1626, the galleon El Almirante from Acapulco, Mexico arrived in the Spanish-colonized Philippine islands. Aside from countless produce and products from the other side of the world, this ship brought an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary that would become a beacon of hope for many Filipinos for centuries to come.
A Filipino prelate has called for financial transparency and integrity in both Church and society, saying, “We cannot keep protesting corruption in government if the same happens within the Church.”
A Filipino bishop stressed that “God considers no one as worthless,” and hope is never lost in humanity, "especially if they are united in His grace of renewal.”
“How could that which, from nonexistence, has been given existence, be God?... But I also venerate and respect all the rest of matter which has brought me salvation, since it is full of energy and holy graces,” St. John Damascene wrote.
Father Flavie Villanueva, a Filipino missionary priest of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) and one of the recipients of the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Award, delivered a lecture on November 6 highlighting how the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in Manila,
