The Vatican has confirmed the appointment of Fr. Gregory Ramon Gaston as the new rector of the Pontificio Collegio Filippino in Rome, Italy.

Fr. Gaston succeeds Msgr. Ruperto Santos, who was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Balanga (Bataan) last April.

The Congregation of the Catholic Education announced the appointment of Fr. Gaston, who has been assigned since 2008 at the Holy Apostles Senior Seminary in Makati City.

As rector, he will oversee the management of the Pontificio Collegio Filippino, the residence for Filipino priests doing further studies in Rome.

Born in 1965 in Silay City, Negros Occidental, Fr. Gaston finished a degree in zoology at the University of the Philippines before deciding to be a priest. He was ordained by Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1993. He served as an official of the Pontifical Council for the Family in the Vatican from 2002 to 2007. 

The Pontificio Collegio Filippino is under the auspices of the Episcopal Commission on Pontificio Collegio Filippino of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).  (Christina I. Hermoso)

Safe motherhood

House Minority Leader Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman has pressed on the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to implement the P100-million safe motherhood project, which has been stalled since 2005.

Lagman scoffed at the failure of PCSO to carry out the program, even as he certified as urgent its implementation as part of the Philippines’ commitment to achieve the 8-point Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, which include maternal health, poverty reduction, universal education, gender equality, child mortality, HIV/AIDS and other diseases, environmental sustainability and global partnership for development.

 “This is an urgent and mandatory contribution which PCSO should be able to comply with. PCSO never complied with this obligation. The executive order was issued five years ago and the program has yet to be implemented until now,” he said during the recent budget hearing at the Lower House.

 “This is our commitment to the MDGs. I would urge the PCSO that this should be complied with,” he said. (Charissa M. Luci)
 
Small cluster of precincts

Unlike in the last May 10 polls, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said Sunday there will be smaller number of clustered precincts for the Oct. 25 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan polls.
 
“We will still cluster, but it will be much smaller. If before 1,000 (voters) per clustered (precincts), now our maximum is 400… Basically, two precincts per clustered precincts,” Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez said.

“Because if we will make it 1,000 per cluster and our system of voting is manual, they might not be able to finish,” he added.

This is because under the manual system, voters will have to write the names of their candidates of choice before, all of these are counted manually by members of the Board of Election Tellers (BETs).

It would be recalled that in the last national and local elections, precincts were clustered as many as five to seven. It led to longer lines of voters.

The Comelec en banc had already decided to go back to the manual system of voting for the Oct. 25 polls, citing the lack of need to automate since there is no need to transmit and canvass the votes unlike with the national elections. (Leslie Aquino)