Pope casts eye on hot-button issues

MANILA, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Pope Francis tackled hot-button issues in remarks in the Philippines on Friday, including the Roman Catholic church's opposition to artificial birth control.

"Be sanctuaries of respect for life, proclaiming the sacredness of every human life from conception to natural death," he said at an arena event for thousands of families.

Pope Paul VI, who wrote an encyclical underlining the reasons for the church's opposition to artificial birth control despite its wide acceptance worldwide, "was a good pastor -- he warned his sheep about the wolves that were approaching, and from the heavens he blesses us today," Pope Francis said.

The Philippines, with a population of about 100 million, has the largest number of adherents to Roman Catholicism in Asia, about 81 percent. But it also has one of the world's largest growing populations, 2.04 percent per annum. Its birth rate is about 22.1 per 1,000. Poverty is rife, with about 25 percent of its people surviving on less than $1 per day.

The church's influence is strong. Local church leaders helped topple the martial law government of President Ferdinand Marco in 1986 by calling upon the faithful to demonstrate in the streets in the "People's Power" revolution. But increasingly, secularization in Filipino thinking has also chipped away at that power and legislators in 2012 bowed to their constituents and passed a reproductive health bill to educate and provide people -- especially the poor in rural areas -- with artificial birth control devices. Passage of the law and its approval by President Benigno Aquino III came despite a concerted campaign against it from church pulpits.

Church groups immediately launched appeals to stop the law, but the country's Supreme Court has ruled most of the key provisions of the legislation were not unconstitutional, which has opened the door to its implementation.

Earlier Friday, the pope bemoaned the "scandalous" social inequalities in the country and corruption, which contributes to it.

Leaders, he said, must stand for honesty, be committed "to the common good." All Filipinos, he added, must reject corruption in all its forms as it diverts resources from the poor."

The Inquirer newspaper Friday morning published an editorial that touched on the pope's themes and said the papal visit should make people think.

"Not just celebration but introspection. That is what Pope Francis' visit should bring about ...," it said.

"For instance, what does it say that Asia's largest Roman Catholic country is likewise one of its most corrupt? That in a country where 80 percent of whose 100 million people are Roman Catholic, the gap between rich and poor is so appalling that Louis Vuitton and Hermes shops, and Jaguar and Lamborghini dealers, coexist with children begging on street corners, homeless families living under bridges, and slum-dwellers feeding off food remnants in the garbage?

"That in a nation where more and more mothers die during childbirth, the clergy has zealously opposed the Reproductive Health Law that broadens access to contraceptives?"

The pope made the remarks on corruption and inequities in an address to government leaders and the diplomatic corps, which started his day of official appearances marked by huge crowds of cheering people along the roads of his motorcade.

On the weekend, the pope flies to the island of Leyte to meet show his solidarity with survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, also known as Yolanda, which devastated the area in 2013.