Filipino Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David has denounced online gambling as the cause of “a new mental health crisis” in the Philippines. David, the 66-year-old bishop of the Diocese of Kalookan, attributed the problem to recycled hardware from now-outlawed Chinese gaming operators in the country.
In a Facebook post, Cardinal David shared an Inquirer newspaper editorial titled “Online Gambling and Broken Lives,” and said he was “calling attention to a new mental health crisis plaguing our country today”. The problem, said the cardinal, involved “fully legalized online gambling platforms using the recycled digital hardware of outlawed POGOs, short for Philippine offshore gaming operators, owned by licensed casino operators.”
POGOs are controversial gambling firms that were mostly owned by the Chinese and linked to human trafficking and other crimes. POGOS, which boomed during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, have been banned by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., but are said to have resurrected in other forms.
Taking over from POGOs, online gambling is “now victimising not foreigners, but our own people, made available 24/7 online, more lucrative than traditional casinos, promoted by paid celebrities, accessible to Filipinos of all age levels, totally unregulated,” said David.
It is “wrecking the lives of poor people who get addicted to it”. “Jesus once warned those who cause the ‘little ones’ in society to stumble: ‘It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea’ (Luke 17:2),” said Cardinal David, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.
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