Marching for justice: Heeding the Church's call

A Trillion-Peso March will be held on Sunday, Sept. 21, at the EDSA People Power monument by the Church Leaders Council for National Transformation and civil society organizations. The day marks the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law by then President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. Indeed, the current wave of protest actions in the country is driven by pent-up discontent about the yawning gap between the elite few and the Filipino masses.

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My focus today is on Pope Leo XIV's critique of the "widening pay gap between corporate bosses" such as Elon Musk and the ordinary working people." But first, let's be firmly grounded on the seriousness of the poverty problem in our country.

The World Bank, updating a 2018 study in November 2022, presented key findings on a study entitled Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in the Philippines: Past, Present, and Prospects for the Future.

First, the good news: "The country has made important gains in poverty reduction, with the poverty rate falling to 16.7 percent in 2018 from 49.2 percent in 1985. By 2018, the middle class had expanded to nearly 12 million people and the economically secure population had risen to 44 million."

And now, the not-so-good news: "Income inequality, however, is still high, with the country's income Gini coefficient, which measures the distribution of income across a population, at 42.3 percent in 2018, one of the highest income inequality rates in East Asia, the World Bank said. The wealthiest one percent of earners capture 17 percent of national income; all those in the bottom 50 percent collectively receive only 14 percent."