Manila (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Card Luis Antonio G. Tagle (pictured) will baptise 450 street kids on the morning of 28 September in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Manila. Fr Matthieu Dauchez, executive director of the organisation, and ten other priests will assist the archbishop of the capital.
The initiative is part of an awareness programme launched by the Archdiocese. The children are under the care of the Tulay ng Kabataan (TNK) Foundation.
In the Philippines, there is often a perception in the most marginalised communities that the poor, because of their poverty and lack of financial means, cannot receive the graces produced by the Sacraments. Working with the archdiocese, TNK is trying to correct the false belief that Catholics must pay for them.
For the Foundation, the poor in Manila are not only exposed to dangers and threats, but often "go without the Sacraments for long periods of time".
“They often think that there is a fee, although Sacraments are for free. Moreover, they don’t even know how and what to do,” TNK said in a statement.
The Foundation has been serving the poorest children in Manila since 1998, developing five programmes aimed at restoring dignity to street children, those with special needs, those who scavenge and those living in slums.
The institution also helps seniors abandoned in the streets. In total, each year volunteers welcome a total of 1,500 children in 36 centres in Metro Manila and Bataan.
Over the past 21 years, TNK has helped more than 55,000 children, including Servant of God Darwin Ramos, who died in 2012 at the age of 17 due to a serious degenerative disease.
On 28 August, his cause of beatification opened in the Diocese of Cubao (a suffragan see of Manila).
