Archbishop lists more concerns for RPOC
THE first meeting of the Region 1 Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) last week presided by Mayor Belen T. Fernandez, as the new RPOC chairperson, was an occasion for its members to set new parameters for the council’s agenda.
“The defining moment for us is when our RPOC communicates and acts on a shared vision for all. It is thus stated in Proverb 29:18, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ And only if we stand side by side, we achieve harmony and peace for everyone,” Fernandez said as she set the tone for the meeting.
Also present at the meeting attended by PNP Region 1 acting Regional Director Police Chief Superintendent Roman A. Felix, RPOC vice-chairman; DILG Region 1 Director Dr. Julie J. Daquioag, was Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas.
Villegas appealed to the council to consider expanding the council’s mission from providing solutions to peace and order problems to include “joblessness, a child without values, destruction of nature, black sand mining in the West Philippine Sea, destruction of the forest, illegal logging.”
“These are also all peace and order problems,” the archbishop intoned.
“Peace and order is not just the absence of criminality. Peace and order is actually right relationships. Where there are right relationships, we don’t even have to bother about drugs and criminality because we would be treating one another with human dignity and with human respect,” Villegas said.
Villegas pledges the archdiocese’s support to the council’s pursuit for peace and order even as he pointed out that while he and Mayor Fernandez both believe in the separation of the State and the Church, they also believe that there should be no separation between God and man.
“We pursue peace not from the point of view of the legal, criminal justice system but in the simplest approach, a holistic approach taking into consideration that every human being is created in the image and likeness of God,” Villegas said. (CIO/Joseph C. Bacani)
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