Catholic Church to hold month-long prayer period for EJK victims

The Catholic Church is urging the faithful to join the month-long period of prayer for the victims of extrajudicial killings linked to the Duterte administration's war on drugs.

According to an article on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines' website, a Mass will be held at the EDSA Shrine at 3 p.m. on November 5 to launch “Lord Heal Our Land Sunday" campaign.

“We believe that our national healing, which only Lord can grant, will come to us through the hands of His mother,” CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas said.

The Mass will be held at the Our Lady of Fatima and will use "an image that was brought by devotees to EDSA in the peaceful 1986 People Power revolt."

"We are appealing to our brother priests to hold ‘Lord Heal Our Land Sunday’ Masses in the provinces too for those who cannot go to the Edsa Shrine that day," Villegas said.

Politicians, the police, and the military are invited to the 33-day campaign that will end on December 5, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

The prayer vigil follows the CBCP's declaration of September 23 to November 1 as a "season of mourning and prayers" for the victims of the "spreading culture of killings." —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News