Manila parishes to help transport medical frontliners

Manila’s Catholic Church is stepping up to make all its facilities available to medical frontliners including providing transportation services for them.

Bishop Broderick Pabillo, apostolic administrator of Manila, on Sunday requested parishes to help transport hospital workers to and from their assignments.

“You can offer your vans to shuttle the health frontliners. They are so grateful that they can find welcome and safe haven in our churches,” he said.

Mass transportation in Luzon was halted after the government ordered an “enhanced community quarantine” in the region.

The archdiocese has earlier opened its facilities in different parishes to shelter medical frontliners and a number of street dwellers in the fight against coronavirus.

“There are now more parishes and religious houses opening their facilities,” Pabillo said.

But the need is rising, the bishop said, adding that not only doctors and nurses are in need of lodging but also hospital maintenance people and orderlies.

Pabillo said that he also tapped religious congregations within the archdiocese to assist in ministering to the needs of those who are at risk and those who are involved in responding to the pandemic.

The archdiocese is also giving attention to the needs of overseas Filipino workers who have returned from abroad and have become persons under monitoring after possible exposure to the Covid-19 in their place of work outside the country.

The Ministry for Migrants, headed by Fr. Tem Fabros, was tapped to spearhead the initiative for the OFWs.