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Circular No. 20-18
TO ALL THE BISHOPS AND THE DIOCESAN ADMINISTRATORS
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies and Reverend Administrators:
RE: A CALL AND INVITATION TO A SPECIAL DAY OF PRAYER FOR OUR FRONTLINE MEDICAL PERSONNEL IN THIS TIME OF CRISIS
Although I am quite sure that many of us, if not all, have been remembering and keeping in our prayers, like our Oratio Imperata, those who are in the medical frontline of our collective efforts to face the menace that the Corona Virus disease has brought to our people, we make this call and invitation to all our bishops, clergy and religious, and to all our faithful, to be united in a
— Special Day of Prayer for All our Frontline Medical Personnel in our fight against the Corona Virus Disease Pandemic
— On March 29, 2020, the 5th Sunday of Lent
— We do this in all our Masses, our Rosaries, during our Holy Hour, and in our moments of Personal Prayer.
OUR FERVENT PRAYERS FOR THEM:
For our doctors, nurses, medical staff, all people working in hospitals and clinics, all our medical specialists and researchers, and all those personnel in our DOH:
̶ Our prayer of gratitude to the Lord for their heroic service to our people in these difficult times.
̶ Our prayer to the Lord for their continued safety and well-being.
̶ Our prayer to the Lord for those among them who lost their lives, having been infected by the disease itself, the disease that they were precisely fighting against. Let us pray for their grieving families and loved ones.
̶ Our prayer to the Lord for those among them who are sick and those who are getting over-fatigued.
̶ Our prayer to the Lord that they may receive the much-needed material support and assistance to perform their duties as medical frontliners in this crisis situation.
We leave it to each diocese and its parishes to concretize this general call to prayer in your liturgies and pastoral directives. This may be articulated in our introduction to the masses, homilies, prayers of the faithful, and intentions in our rosaries and holy hour. Of course we continue praying our Oratio Imperata.
May our prayers move us to action:
Among the actions of support we can do is to remind ourselves and our people to cooperate with and obey and follow the quarantine measures that our local government directed us to follow, most especially the directive to stay at home.
Another action we can do: It has come to our attention that many medical personnel, doctors, nurses, and medical staff are now in a problematic situation. They are hesitant to go back to their families, and their families and children are hesitant to receive them at home – for the simple obvious reason: they fear that the Corona Virus Disease might be transmitted to them. Also we heard that some landlords are now becoming hesitant to allow them to come home to their rented places for fear of the transmission of this disease.
May our prayer move us to action: As dioceses and parishes, can we start assisting them by providing facilities for them to go home to, some place for rest and sleep, and perhaps some meals – a second home for our dedicated medical frontliners – like some available buildings and rooms in our dioceses and parishes, for example, formation centers, retreat houses, and pastoral centers? And of course, with well-prepared hygienic protocols as we make these places available for them.
Thank you very much for your kind consideration of this call and invitation. Let us continue praying for each other.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+ ROMULO G. VALLES, D.D.
Archbishop of Davao
CBCP President
