‘Bring your faith when you vote’

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines — Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas yesterday urged the faithful to discern their candidates in the May 13 elections.

Villegas issued a pastoral message to the faithful,  “to bring your faith as you choose.”

“Do not leave God when you vote,” he said.

Villegas, former president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, stressed all elections are important. 

“Each vote is the power of the people to choose their leaders. It is the backbone of democracy,” he said.

Villegas likened the candidates to job applicants. He said candidates must present their credentials humbly and honestly before the electorate. 

Villegas said voters have the duty to assess them diligently and, freed from pressure, check if they meet their standards. “We decide; not the candidates,” he stressed.

Citing Church teachings, Villegas said Pope Benedict XVI called the proper exercise of democracy as the most effective way of ensuring a future for the welfare of humanity.

“This right to vote is not absolute. It has limits. The power to vote must be based on truth. The right to vote must be based on the right understanding of human dignity,” he said. 

Villegas also reminded voters that “the kind of leaders we elect reveals the kind of people we are.” 

He said the winners in elections are mirrors of the values and aspirations, dreams and hopes of the people who voted for them.

“It can also show our backward moving society,” Villegas said.

In the exercise of the right to vote, as recent history shows, values and convictions can be easily manipulated by people who seek brute power, Villegas said.

He quoted Saint John Paul II as saying that democracy without values can easily turn into a thinly disguised totalitarianism.