South China Sea: Philippines coastguard appeals to Virgin Mary for divine intervention

“In different times in the history of the Church, Mary appeared and was involved in different crises that communities went through. And because of those crises, she was given specific titles,” Reyes said on Monday.

The Antipolo Cathedral’s icon, known as Our Lady of Peace, is just “one of the many titles given to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, the son of God”, he said.

Another Mary statue, called Our Lady of Fatima, was carried by priests during the Philippines’ 1986 People Power Revolution and was credited with helping make the revolt peaceful and bloodless.

On his next trip, he plans to bring a replica of the Our Lady of the Holy Rosary of La Naval de Manila – a gold and ivory Marian figure said to have miraculously prevented Dutch invaders from conquering Manila in 1646.

However, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, cautioned on Monday against the church adding “further fuel to the tension”.

“We are not political leaders, we are spiritual and moral leaders, and we know that our compatriots, people in the country are getting tense,” he said, adding: “Nobody wants a war”.

But others have been vocal in advocating for greater church involvement in the South China Sea conflict.

Last month, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, a former conference president, penned a pastoral letter entitled “Lord Save us! We are perishing!” warning of “insidious attempts by a foreign power that governs by an ideology that recognises no God and keeps all religion and the practice of faith under the heavy heel of its totalitarian boot to ‘trample our sacred shores’,” referencing the Philippine national anthem.

“Not only are our maritime zones usurped, and our fishermen evicted from their fishing grounds,” decried Villegas, the former right-hand man of the late Cardinal Jaime Sin. “Our marine environment is relentlessly wrecked as China endeavours to convert features into islands and militarised platforms.”

He stressed that the geopolitical situation has become “a profoundly moral issue” as many Filipino fishermen have been deprived of their livelihoods and forced “to rummage through the leftovers of Chinese poachers and encroachers”.

The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, echoed the call for peaceful resolutions during a press briefing in Manila on July 2, stating that conflicts including in the South China Sea must be resolved peacefully and encouraging “parties in conflict to abide by international law”.