KUDOS and gratitude to award-winning filmmaker and Marian devotee Baby Nebrida for organizing a prayer caravan on Oct. 13, marking the date of the last monthly apparition of Our Lady of Fatima from May to October 1917.
Livestreamed on the Emmanuel TV Network Facebook page, the devotional drive started at Christ the King Greenmeadows and passed EDSA Shrine, Santuario de San Jose, Mary the Queen, Pinaglabanan Church, Mount Carmel Shrine, the Pink Sisters church, Christ the King E. Rodriguez, Santo Domingo Church, Quiapo Church, Intramuros, Ermita and Malate churches, and St. Therese Shrine facing the airport.
Her group of several vans, a balloon-festooned black pickup with the Fatima statue and an audiovisual truck blaring religious songs and prayers, and showing devotional images and videos sought divine succor and safeguards in our nation’s time of political turmoil, economic distress, weather strains and geopolitical frictions.
Nebrida’s call for prayers, following nationwide Oratio Imperata Mass petitions over the years, comes just when our country needs it with global and domestic economic pressures, food and energy strains from “super El Niño,” unprecedented political corruption and machinations, even the online manipulation of youths for murder and geopolitical rivalry possibly plunging our nation into devastating war.
The grave threats we face
How bad is the state of our nation, and how much worse can it get?
First, the economy, which burdens the great majority of Filipinos with no hefty bank accounts to absorb soaring prices and job losses. At about 2.5 percent for the first semester of 2026, growth is half the rates of recent years, owing to soaring energy prices, and plunging industry and investment — respectively down 2.4 percent and 9.2 percent in the second quarter.
The declines in industry and investment, if not reversed, point to more growth and employment constraints ahead with factories and facilities stagnating. Economists see growth for all of 2026 slowing to between 2.9 and 3.7 percent, against the government target of 3.5 to 4.5 percent.
The job situation also faces challenges in coming years if conflicts escalate in Europe and the Middle East, as both national leaders and seasoned analysts warn, affecting tens or hundreds of thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Besides OFW issues, artificial intelligence (AI) is tipped to perform more and more functions now done by armies of business process outsourcing (BPO) staff.
No wonder, 16.8 million Filipino families rate themselves poor — 55 percent of respondents of Social Weather Stations (SWS) September survey, up from 49 percent in June.
Even worse, families earning less than they need for food rose to 44 percent from 36 percent. Hence, 22.6 percent went hungry in the July-to-September period, topping 20.3 percent the previous quarter. Average hunger incidence is 20.2 percent this year and last — exceeded only in the 2020 pandemic.
This deprivation will get worse before it gets better with super El Niño set to slash food production worldwide, pushing up prices, on top of harvest reductions due to 30 percent of global fertilizer shipments largely blocked with the Strait of Hormuz closed.
Also escalating living expenses are higher energy prices, also due to Middle East hostilities, which now constrict petroleum shipments not just from the Persian Gulf, but also from the Red Sea. And America buying Russian diesel won’t ease fuel scarcity.
What makes prayer imperative in the face of these economic challenges are their root causes largely beyond what our nation can address: expanding war, constricted petroleum and fertilizer supplies, El Niño impact on farming and hydroelectric power, and AI taking over BPO.
We need upright leadership
But we need prayers, too, for what we should address as a nation: our dysfunctional, corrupt government leaders. That remains the paramount political problem four decades after the “people power” EDSA Revolution deposed a regime over despotism, corruption and economic dislocation, and another president fell over graft 25 years ago.
Every administration since has seen top-level scandals, and the worst is the infrastructure sleaze under incumbent Marcos, allegedly perpetrated by his own camp. Rising from our corruption quagmire and setting our country on a new direction of righteousness and progress demands new, credible leadership, which most Filipinos do not see coming from Marcos.
In SWS’ September poll, net satisfaction in the president fell to minus-11 percentage points, from minus-7 in June. And from plus 42 points in July 2024, when SWS started trust ratings, Marcos now has minus-4 points net trust grade. That rating isn’t likely to mobilize the nation to address our ills.
Meanwhile, the Marcos regime, including its investigative agencies and Congress allies, are focused on bringing down the leader most Filipinos trust: Vice President Sara Duterte, with 56 percent of SWS respondents having much trust in her, giving her a plus 30 points net trust rating. This is despite more than three years of political and media attacks.
As expounded by fellow columnist Rigoberto Tiglao Jr. on Oct. 14, Duterte also remains the top presidential contender, based on the latest survey by Pulse Asia, the other established pollster (https://tinyurl.com/4x5jkyzx). And that is widely seen as the reason Marcos and his minions mean to convict her of impeachment charges, thus barring her from any government post, including the presidency.
This quest to keep her out of Malacañang started in 2023 with the campaign to weaken her political clout and public appeal, followed by failed Charter change in 2024, and impeachments in 2025 and 2026. And a powerful force behind the anti-Duterte drive is the United States, which fears losing access too Philippine bases and territory under her rule.
And the US factor makes our political quagmire immensely difficult to resolve. Washington has not only mobilized dominant political and media forces against Sara, but also keeps security forces away from moves to let our people choose the next president without top-level machinations.
Plainly, we need more prayers like Nebrida’s caravan. And that’s not even considering the alarming geopolitical arena, as we shall see on Oct. 18.