Published November 19, 2004
Anchor Notebook
I was bouncing like a pinball in a four-wheel-drive on a mountain road in the Philippines when Father Ben Torreto, our guide in the remote region, received a text message on his cell phone: George W. Bush had won reelection.
The villagers in Danggoan, a place accessed via unsteady bamboo raft or a terrifying bridge made of four rusty cables and intermittent bamboo sticks, were right. Earlier that day, in the stifling heat, they calmly said, "Bush, it’s Bush," getting their news from the single radio station that reaches their small village.
It’s not easily apparent how the election will affect the lives of a Filipino mother nurturing a dehydrated child back to health in a poverty-stricken village, or a man behind a plow towed by a water buffalo.
What is apparent is that American Catholics are called to pursue those connections, to work toward global solidarity, to look at how decisions made in the United States affect the world’s poor.
Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, the Filipino Oblate who heads the Cotabato Archdiocese, said the newly formed partnership with the Anchorage Archdiocese is a response to globalization. Archbishop Roger Schwietz says the partnership is a sign that his archdiocese is maturing, moving beyond the missionary mode of surviving on others’ charity.
Back in Manila I found another take on globalization: A newspaper columnist lamented that the rest of the world could not vote in the American election.
By building global solidarity, American Catholics can be sure to consider their one human family in such decisions.
— Kelly DuFort