PEACE advocate Fr. Amando Picardal, one of the brave personalities who gallantly protested the drug killings in Davao City, has died.
According to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines website, Picardal, also known as the “biking priest” for his penchant to take long bicycle rides to highlight his advocacies, died Wednesday night on the 47th anniversary of his religious profession. He was 69.
The congregation did not provide other details.
Fr. Edilberto Cepe, provincial superior of the Redemptorist Province of Cebu, described Fr. Picardal, also a professor of theology, as a “brilliant and courageous missionary” who has touched and transformed many lives due to his advocacy of peace and social justice.
Fr. Picardal helped document the killings in Davao City when former President Duterte was still the mayor.
In 2017, the priest wrote a detailed report on the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS) from 1998 to 2015 which he said became part of the information submitted to the International Criminal Court, which is investigating Duterte for his administration’s bloody war on drugs.
“This nearly cost my life as I became a target of assassination and forced me to leave my hermitage and go into exile,” Fr. Picradal said in 2021 while he was in Rome.
Fr. Picardal also served as executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission on Basic Ecclesiastical Communities of the CBCP. He also wrote a column for the CBCP Monitor, the official publication of the bishops’ conference.
Fr. Cepe enjoined the faithful to “join us in praying for his eternal repose as he now finally joins our Redeemer.
“May the light and joy that he left this world radiate through us as we continue to become beacons of truth and social transformation,” Fr. Cepe said.
The CBCP appointed Archbishop Rex Andrew Alarcon of Caceres as the national spiritual director of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV) after the Permanent Council’s decision during its May 22 meeting.
Archbishop Alarcon formally assumed the post last May 27.
CBCP President Bishop Pablo Virgilio David said: “We express our deepest gratitude to you for accepting this assignment. May the Lord continue to bless and guide your ministry.”
The PPCRV is a national parish-based political but non-partisan lay movement that works for clean, honest, accurate, meaningful, and peaceful elections established in 1991 from the realization that the laity must be part of nation-building and the renewal of Christian life.
The PPCRV’s current national chairperson is Evelyn Singson.
