Red hat is ‘call to martyrdom’ for Philippine bishop outspoken on country’s war on drugs

Bishop Pablo Virgilio Siongco David of Kalookan, Philippines, one of the 20 cardinal-designates to be elevated at the Dec. 7 consistory at the Vatican, was thrust into the spotlight and singled out by his country’s president in 2018 at the height of a bloody government anti-drug war there.

The bishop, known as “Bishop Ambo” from the diocese situated just north of Manila, the capital, told OSV News in an email interview Oct. 21, “We were just among the people whom the previous government tried to intimidate for daring to question such inhumane government policies. Hopefully this new appointment can lend a greater credibility and legitimacy to the resistance to government policies that violate human rights and trample on human dignity.”

At the start of the killing campaign in 2016, Bishop David, an outspoken critic, began taking victims’ families under his wing. He called his diocese “the killing fields,” where some of the most impoverished residents became overwhelmingly targeted as alleged “users and pushers” in the anti-drug war, alluding to Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s that pushed millions into forced labor on farms where they were executed and died of other causes.

Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has admitted that he kept a “death squad” to crack down on crime while mayor of one of the country’s largest cities, BBC News reported Oct. 29.

In his first testimony before an official investigation on his so-called war on drugs, the 79-year-old said the squad was made of gangsters. Duterte promised to replicate his anti-crime campaign in Davao city on a national scale, and thanks to it won the presidency by a landslide in 2016.

Human rights groups have so far estimated close to 20,000 died in the Philippine government’s anti-drug campaign. Human Rights Watch said at least 2,555 of the killings were carried out by the Philippine National Police.

The prelate’s voice became most strident in August 2017, when three police officers shot 17-year old Kian Delos Santos dead in Caloocan City, bordering northern Manila. The officers said he engaged them in a gun battle, but evidence showed he was unarmed and shot from behind while on his knees. Security cameras captured him being dragged off at night to a dark, filthy alleyway by a river where witnesses heard multiple bullets fired.

After he became a voice in the case that shocked the nation, local media reported Bishop David received death threats.

Divine Word Father Flavie Villanueva of Manila first met Bishop David at the funeral of Delos Santos. Father Villanueva runs a homeless shelter and actively sought out widows and orphans left behind by those who were gunned down in the campaign.

Father Villanueva, 53, told OSV News that he knew of the bishop who had learned about his program. The priest offered to take some of Bishop David’s charges into the shelter program, which became tailored to serve drug war victims’ families.

“There was … a sense of mutuality, even relief in knowing that we are not alone in what we’re doing,” said Father Villanueva. “There was that sense of admiration knowing that there’s a bishop who took time to celebrate in the slums, the community, and even particularly more so, to mourn the death of a 17-year-old because that doesn’t happen everyday.”

He said in the seven years that followed he has looked to Bishop David as a mentor and strong supporter especially in helping those whose lives are still being threatened today, two years after Duterte’s term ended.

Bishop David, 65, said in the email to OSV News that being named cardinal would be formalized in a ceremony in which designates would “be made to wear” the color red as part of their standard garb; among them the red skull cap, red sash, red cord around the neck.

“And yes — red socks, too!” he exclaimed in the message. “This is mainly to rub in the call to martyrdom, the call for readiness to shed one’s blood for the Gospel. To think of it mainly as an honor is to totally misunderstand it.’

Cardinal-designate David said that unless the pope says otherwise, “I take it for granted that I remain as bishop of Kalookan, a bishop of the urban peripheries,” and that the pope himself “asked us to get increasingly used to being regarded as ‘servant’ (rather) than to being called ‘Eminence.'”

The president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of the Philippines since 2021 and incoming vice president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences said his diocese was already being looked at as a model for the rest of the Philippine dioceses for its planned “mission stations” that will reach out to those in the margins of society as well as the church, and bring the church to the people, which he said is “the work of the Holy Spirit that needs to be sustained.”

Cardinal-designate David received a sacred theology doctorate from Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He was a seminary year behind Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who is pro-prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization’s Section for First Evangelization and was also a classmate at the Loyola School of Theology in Metro Manila.

The bishop expressed “apprehension” over being appointed a cardinal.

“I am not that young anymore and the pressure of work overload is also taking its toll on me,” said the biblical scholar. “I hope I will be able to cope both spiritually and psychologically. … I will have to double up on my daily disciplines of prayer and discernment in order to do so.”

That includes “coffee with Jesus” from 5 to 7 a.m. and a nightly rosary on the grounds of San Roque Cathedral in the diocese.

A member of the Synod on Syndolity that concluded in Rome Oct. 27, Cardinal-designate David was elected to a synodal council that will oversee implementation of the synodal process for the church and will prepare ground for the next synod of bishops.

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