[The Wide Shot] Will more Christians rise up vs Marcos, Duterte?

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“How many are you?” the nun asked, searching through her handbag. 

“Take it,” she told me, “and share it with your companions.”

Like a grandmother giving baon to her apo, 81-year-old Sister Cho Borromeo handed me two pink plastic bags at around 7 pm inside a Catholic chapel. The bags contained four chicken sandwiches, which, according to her companion, Borromeo lovingly prepared one by one at the sisters’ residence. 

“Was it this way during the first EDSA?” I asked, eliciting a smile from the elderly Franciscan nun, who, in February 2024, recounted to Rappler her near-death experience at the EDSA revolt.

The chicken sandwiches from Sister Cho, as she is fondly called, eased the hunger of our team — production specialist Ulysis Pontanares, driver Danny Espina, and myself — as we wrapped up a whole day of coverage on Friday, January 31.

This scene, like many others that day, was reminiscent of the historic uprising along Metro Manila’s main highway, EDSA, that ousted dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos on February 25, 1986.

That Friday evening, Borromeo joined around a thousand Filipinos for a Mass at EDSA Shrine that was built to commemorate the 1986 People Power Revolution. For those who pass by EDSA, the shrine is recognizable for the 33-foot bronze statue of Mary, Queen of Peace, sculpted by Virginia Ty-Navarro and now watching over commuters and vehicles in the Metro Manila’s busiest thoroughfare.

The Mass came at the end of an afternoon of protests outside the 300-seater chapel, with various religious groups criticizing both President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte. In particular, protesters called for Duterte’s impeachment and denounced Marcos for the 2025 national budget that is said to have compromised social services.  

The EDSA Shrine protest was a rare moment when Roman Catholics and Evangelical Christians joined forces in a political movement — a call to action in a country where religion is more closely tied to nationalism compared to others in the world.

The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) said around 1,300 protesters attended the rally in front of EDSA Shrine on Friday afternoon.

The crowd at EDSA Shrine was only around 0.08% of the 1.58 million people who attended the Iglesia ni Cristo rally opposing Duterte’s impeachment on January 13. 

It’s also much smaller — around a third, based on QCPD estimates — than the 4,000 protesters who joined a separate rally at the People Power Monument (PPM) at White Plains corner EDSA, Quezon City, on Friday morning. 

The rally near the PPM — a 59-feet tall Eduardo Castrillo sculpture of a Filipina lifting her hands to the sky, a symbol of freedom — was led by political groups such as Magdalo and Akbayan. The QCPD listed a Magdalo coordinator as “group leader.” 

Unlike the EDSA Shrine protest, the PPM rally called for Duterte’s impeachment but hardly criticized Marcos over the national budget.

Magdalo’s chairman, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, has repeatedly pushed for an alliance with Marcos to prevent the return of the Dutertes in power.

But wasn’t Trillanes a supporter of Marcos rival Leni Robredo in the 2022 elections? Well, Trillanes and his followers have now turned against Robredo and pushed for Senator Risa Hontiveros as presidential bet in the 2028 presidential election. But that’s another story.

Trillanes, in a Facebook post on January 25, said the PPM rally was different from the EDSA Shrine event, which, he claimed, was infiltrated by pro-Duterte groups and pro-Duterte generals. A former coup plotter, he said the one at PPM was “solely” for Duterte’s impeachment.

Activist priest Father Robert Reyes, one of the organizers of the EDSA Shrine rally, denied that their protest was “infiltrated” by Duterte supporters. 

In a phone interview with Rappler on Friday, Reyes said the PPM mobilization “is not exclusively Trillanes.” Reyes said Trillanes’ view was not shared by everybody at the PPM on Friday. One of the groups at the PPM, in fact, was the Hontiveros-chaired Akbayan, which also attended the protest at EDSA Shrine.

I asked Reyes about Trillanes’ criticism of the EDSA Shrine rally: “Could it be that it’s because Senator Trillanes is aligning himself with President Marcos?”

“Well, you know, that is how people are seeing him. I don’t want to say anything about that, but that’s how people see him,” Reyes answered, noting Trillanes’ silence on controversial 2025 national budget. 

Oh, yes, Marcos-Duterte critics are as divided as the Marcos-Duterte “Uniteam” that is now extinct.

I saw and experienced this for myself — in a physical way — when I had to move from one protest to another on January 31, thinking : “Why didn’t they just unite in one big rally?”

To be clear, many people who care for the country attended the two separate EDSA rallies. (A number of participants we interviewed at the PPM, however, didn’t know why they were there. When I asked who among them support the Vice President, guess how many raised their hands? Watch the video here.)

But the one at EDSA Shrine was significant for me, as a religion reporter, because it showed a clear intersection of religion and politics, colored by a diversity of Christian faiths.

Religion and nationalism

A former Spanish colony that is now home to the world’s third biggest number of Catholics, the Philippines is one-of-a-kind when it comes to religion and nationalism.

A Pew Research Center survey published on Wednesday, January 29, showed the importance of faith in Filipinos’ sense of country.

“Of the countries where we asked about the importance of Christianity to national identity, the Philippines stands out: Nearly three-quarters say being a Christian is very important for being truly Filipino,” Pew Research Center reported.

The survey had other interesting findings about the Philippines:

• 86% of Filipinos said it is “somewhat” or “very” important “to have a national leader who has religious beliefs that are the same as their own”
• 85% of Filipinos said it is “somewhat” or “very” important “to have a national leader who has strong religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are different from their own”
• 81% of Filipinos said the Bible should have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of influence on the country’s laws

EDSA Shrine is a symbol of many of these survey findings.

It’s the place where around two million people gathered from February 22 to 25, 1986, after Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin called on his flock to protect rebel forces at Camp Crame. It was with the power of prayer and action, including rosaries held up by clenched fists, that Filipinos drove away the Marcos family at the bloodless EDSA revolt.

EDSA Shrine stood witness to a similar mass protest from January 16 to 20, 2001, that forced actor-turned-politician Joseph Estrada out of the presidency. Sin was also a key figure at EDSA Dos.

So at EDSA Shrine on Friday, when I saw Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers; Protestant pastors and church leaders; and members of different Christian churches, I sensed the start of something new, as a second Marcos rules this Christian-majority nation.

Social anthropologist Melba Maggay, an Evangelical Christian who co-founded the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture, explained why the EDSA Shrine rally on Friday was unprecedented.

“What’s good is, for the first time, the clergy — Catholic and Protestant — and the imams are now willing to publicly oppose what is wrong in society,” Maggay said in an interview with Rappler at EDSA Shrine.

She noted how Evangelical Protestants wanted to stay away from such activism, because they wanted to uphold the separation of church and state, “which I think they misunderstand.” On Friday, however, two Evangelical bishops — Noel Pantoja and Efraim Tendero — spoke onstage during the EDSA Shrine protest. 

It’s a big deal for her, because she said Evangelical Protestants are “very allergic to politics for theological reasons.” 

Referring to the “obvious highway robbery” in the 2025 national budget, Maggay said, “It’s good that the Church, for the first time — at least the Evangelicals — are willing to protest, because this is an issue of massive robbery.”

“For me, this is a sign forward, that we have Evangelical bishops who are willing to stand and speak here in the rally,” Maggay said. She added that they now have a faith-based coalition called Katipunan ng Kingdom Keepers or KKK, which she hopes will continue to grow.

Maggay made an appeal to her fellow Evangelical Christians.

“I think it is time to express in action our faith,” Maggay said. “Because there’s no separation between evangelism and social action. Our faith tells us that both are parts of our Christian duty as Evangelical Christians, so it is important that when we have massive dishonesty in the way our funds are misappropriated, I think it is time that the Evangelicals should rise up.”

Borromeo, who was among the nuns at the People Power uprising, emphasized the need to call for good governance in the face of brazen corruption.

“When there are movements like this, I feel like I have to be around, because it is my way of making a stand. I always stand on the side of truth,” Borromeo said. “At this time, not to make a stand is to stand on the side of darkness.”

While we debate the separation of church and state, will more Christians understand the unbreakable bond between faith and justice? – Rappler.com