San Roque's tomb, Venice [Wikipedia]
Today, 16 August, is the feast
of San Roque in the Philippines where there is great devotion to him. He was a
French layman born around 1348 and who died 16/17 August 1376/79. (Some date
his life from c.1295 – 16 August 1327). He is invoked against the plague. He is
known in France as St Roch, in Italy as San Rocco and in Spain, Portugal and
the Philippines as San Roque. He is no so well known in the English-speaking
world and in English is referred to as St Rock.
According to
Wikipedia: Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He
was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself
a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a
spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging
to a nobleman named Gothard Palastrelli supplied him with bread and licked his
wounds, healing them. Count Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the
bread, discovered Saint Roch and became
his acolyte.
Among other things,
he is a patron saint of persons falsely accused because when he arrived back in his native Montpellier, France, after a pilgrimage to Rome during which
he took care of strangers he met on the way who were suffering from the plague,
he was arrested as a spy and put in jail by his uncle who didn’t recognize him.
He died in jail after five years and it was only then that the people
recognized who he was.
San Roque Cathedral, Caloocan, Philippines [Wikipedia]
As of 15 August,
yesterday, the Philippine Daily Inquirer notes in its Kill List that since 30 June, when the current president took his oath of office,
646 have been killed. Since his election on 10 May, 693 deaths have been listed
by the Inquirer. Most of these are
vigilante murders against ‘suspects’ connected with illegal drugs. Others have
been of persons in police custody killed while ‘trying to escape’ and such
things. Many are unidentified.
All of these people
were poor and not a single one was brought to court. Politicians and other prominent persons who have ‘surrendered’
have been treated with kid gloves, one even staying for a few days at the
official residence of the Chief of Police, a crony of the President who served
under the latter as Police Chief in Davao City while the current President was Mayor/Dictator there, a city where there are
more than 1,400 unsolved murders. This allegedly peaceful city has, according to the Philippine National Police, one of the worst crime records in the country.
But the escalation of killings is not going unnoticed in the Philippines itself nor in the international media, for example, here.
May San Roque, unjustly
jailed, and venerated as a healer, intercede for the poor of the Philippines,
so many of whom have been brutally murdered, their bodies left in gutters,
under the brutal regime now in power.
Statue of San Roque, Prague [Wikipedia]
2 comments:
Father,
He is known here in Glasgow as St Roch and has a parish, a secondary school, a primary school and a football club named for him. St Roch FC (nicknamed the Candy Rock) was in fact the first club of the great Jimmy McGrory.
Many thanks, 'Crux' for that interesting information. Maybe he can put in a word for the 'Askals', 'The Mongrels', the nickname of the Philippine national soccer team who have been doing quite well in recent years in regional competitions. In recent years interest in soccer has grown. Previously it was totally ignored, except in two or three areas where the sport had been played for a long time.
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