Massive crowd expected at Philippine religious festival

Up to a million worshippers are expected to attend an international Catholic festival being held in the central Philippines, organisers said Monday.

Over 1,200 delegates from 75 countries have gathered on the island of Cebu, for the 51st International Eucharistic Congress, a major church gathering held every four years, said the event's media relations officer Reverend Jonathan Rubin.

The seven-day conference, which started on Sunday, will culminate in a mass on January 31 officiated by a representative of Pope Francis which is targeted to draw up to a million people, Rubin told AFP.

"Most of these people attending will be Filipinos," he said, reflecting the deep faith felt by many in this Southeast Asian archipelago where about 80 percent of the population are Roman Catholics.

Organisers had originally hoped that Pope Francis, who attracted mammoth crowds in a visit to the Philippines last year, would attend the conference.

The Philippines was a Spanish colony from the 1500s to 1898 and Spanish missionaries deeply implanted the Catholic faith in this country.

Both divorce and abortion remain outlawed and even birth control remains a controversial issue in the Philippines due to the influence of the church which opposes such practices.

A Sunday opening mass officiated by papal representative, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar, attracted about 300,000 people, said Rubin, boosting confidence they could get an even bigger crowd on the last day.

In his homily at the mass, Bo addressed contemporary issues, saying "the Eucharist calls for a third world war... against poverty, a third world war against a world that produces more weapons while more than half a billion don’t have enough food," according to excerpts released by the local church.

He also called on the faithful to publicly oppose abortion, the death penalty and euthenasia which are all prohibited by the Catholic church.

In an address Monday, Peruvian archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte also called on the church to respect local cultures even as it evangelises them.

"The (different) nations should not change their socio-cultural identity, it was like that before and should remain the same now and in the future," he said in remarks released by organisers.

Topics such as dialogue with other religions, different cultures and with suffering groups, are also to be discussed at the gathering.