MANILA, Philippines – Local migration from countrysides to city centers has posed a “big challenge” to traditional parishes in the Philippines, a Filipino bishop said at a historic Vatican summit to chart the future of the Catholic Church.

Kalookan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), explained the issue of local migration in a press conference on Saturday, October 5, during the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican. 

David began with the premise that “the influx of people from the provinces to the metropolitan centers is presently changing the demographics in many of our dioceses in the Philippines.” He cited the example of the Diocese of Imus, formerly led by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, whose population increased from 1.5 million to 4 million “in just about 10 years.”

The Diocese of Imus covers the entire province of Cavite, located around 34 kilometers away from the capital Manila. Cavite, the country’s most populous province, had a population of 4.34 million in 2020 compared to 3.09 million in 2010 and 2.06 million in 2000, according to government statistics. 

“The phenomenon of local migration is becoming a big challenge to our traditional parishes, which normally cater only to the original residents living close to the city center,” said David.

He explained that some city residents “would even regard the influx of the settlers from the provinces as a kind of threat.” He said these city dwellers, in particular, “think that the slum communities that are created by the local migration are becoming a breeding place for criminality and drug abuse.”

This is “quite similar to the kind of threat that countries are feeling about the influx of foreign migrants,” he pointed out.

The Pope Francis challenge

Filipino Catholics, however, took “very seriously” the challenge of Pope Francis when he visited the Philippines in 2015: to “go out to the peripheries.”

“Because we could not get the local migrants to enter our parishes — they are sort of alienated from the traditional parishes — we decided to go out to them,” said David, 65, known for his efforts to support the poorest communities, including drug war victims during the Duterte presidency.

This, he said, “paved the way for the creation of 20 mission stations” in his own territory, the Diocese of Kalookan. 

Mission stations are often makeshift churches in far-flung or relatively inaccessible communities, an effort by the Catholic Church to go where the people are. Such mission stations, according to David, “are the Church’s presence among the poorest of the poor.”

“If the poor don’t come to Church, the Church must go to the poor. That was our decision. And this decision is now pleasantly transforming our parishes from maintenance to mission because it is giving our traditional parish ministries and organizations the motive to go out to the peripheries,” he said.

The Synod on Synodality is a three-year process of dialogue, from the parish level to the Vatican, on different issues affecting the Catholic Church. The current Vatican meeting runs from October 2 to 27, a continuation of an earlier monthlong meeting in October 2023. 

The Synod on Synodality, which began in 2021, is concluding this year.

David is one of three delegates from the CBCP at the ongoing second session of the Synod on Synodality. The two other delegates are Pasig Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara, vice president of the CBCP, and Manila Archbishop Jose Cardinal Advincula.

Tagle, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, is at the synod as a member of the Vatican bureaucracy. Another Filipino bishop, Archbishop Ryan Jimenez, represents the Archdiocese of Agaña in Guam. 

A Filipina theologian, Estela Padilla, is also among the delegates as part of the Pope’s unprecedented move to open the synod to non-bishops, including women and young people, for the first time. – Rappler.com