US Ally’s Religious Leaders Slam ‘Chinese Aggressors’ in South China Sea

A group of Catholic bishops has made an impassioned appeal on the behalf of Philippine fishermen whose livelihoods are threatened by Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. The pastoral exhortation, signed by prominent Archbishop Socrates Villegas and four other bishops from dioceses in the Catholic-majority country’s Luzon and Palawan provinces, warned against a policy of appeasement toward the “Chinese aggressors” and gave their blessing to embracing the Philippines’ “allies.” Beijing and Manila are locked in a territorial struggle over areas of the sea lying within the latter’s internationally recognized exclusive economic zone. Philippine fishermen have found themselves swept up…