The Catholic Church might resort to bloc voting in next year’s elections to ensure that only candidates who are pro-family and pro-life will be elected into office.

Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (ECFL-CBCP), said bloc voting means urging the faithful to go for candidates supporting the Church’s advocacies.

“Candidates who will sign and give their commitment to our campaign, these are the candidates who will be supported by our commission,” he said over Church-run Radio Veritas 846 Monday.

The Church has been wooing lawmakers not to support the controversial Reproductive Health Bill or House Bill (HB) 5043 currently pending in Congress, convinced that the measure is anti-life and anti-family.

Castro also revealed their plan to create a broad coalition with other religious groups and sectors to achieve their goal.

“The clergy will be there to support only, but the initiative must come from the laity because the idea to have a broad coalition came from them. This is to safeguard that only our allies in family and life will be elected,” he said.

The ECFL official is hoping to get more lawmakers to their side and withdraw their support to the RH bill authored by Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman.

“A lot of lawmakers who signed the bill didn’t withdraw their signatures out of respect to him. But they assured us that they will not vote for it,” said Castro.

“We are not afraid but we won’t let our guard down either just because they said that,” he added.

Last week, House Speaker Prospero Nograles ordered the expediting of plenary debates on the bill.

The priest did not say whether their bloc voting plan would include candidates running for other positions, such as president and vice president.

Should the plan push through, the Church would be the latest religious organization to flex its political muscle in the country, where influential groups like the Iglesia Ni Cristo and the El Shaddai, which incidentally is also Catholic, are vigorously wooed by politicians for their poll influence among followers.