SUMMARY
MANILA, Philippines – One of the Philippines’ most popular Catholic bishops launched a 50-day rosary campaign beginning Thursday, June 27, to defend the Philippines from China as tensions rise in the West Philippine Sea.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said the rosary campaign will run until August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, or the Catholic belief that the mother of Jesus did not experience death and was brought to heaven.
In a pastoral letter, Villegas cited evidence of “insidious attempts” to trample on “our sacred shores.” Referring to China, he attributed these to “a foreign power that governs by an ideology that recognizes no God and keeps all religion and the practice of faith under the heavy heel of its totalitarian boot.”
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