Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle said news media’s focus on “bad news” tended to foster pessimism and even “glamorize evil.”
“Sometimes unwittingly or unconsciously, our way of presenting evil present in society some times glamorizes the very evil that we want to denounce,” Tagle said during the Catholic Mass Media Awards on Nov. 12.
“Let us not glamorize evil.”
He warned that hopelessness was being fostered by a media industry that consider good news boring.
“If the good news is too boring to report, then does the Gospel which is Good News have a place in communication?” Tagle said.
Violence condemned
Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David warned against indifference and desensitization to violence as a result of extra-judicial killings (EJK) of drug suspects.
Speaking at an international youth conference on new evangelization in Iloilo City on Nov. 8, he said the government’s bloody war on drugs had made his diocese into a “killing field.”
The vice president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Bishop David showed the audience a video of a shooting incident near his cathedral in May 2018.
The bishop said the crime was committed “casually” by motorcycle-riding men wearing bonnets in broad daylight.
He deplored that no one even dared to help the victim or cover his body.
He also showed photos of people killed in the streets while children were watching.
“The children are exposed to violence in my diocese,” he said.
“And why should I care as a pastor? What kind of shepherd I am if I’ll just keep quiet about this inhumanity?” he said.
Miracle saint
Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City is holding the Novena to San Vicente Ferrer every Friday, 5:30 p.m.
A Dominican missionary during the medieval ages, San Vicente Ferrer is considered a miraculous saint.
For announcements, email lzulueta@inquirer.com.ph.