Oscar V. Cruz, a retired archbishop who is now the leading church voice against the bill, said Filipino Catholics should not be ashamed that they are global holdouts on divorce.

“That is a distinction that we should all be very proud of,” Archbishop Cruz said. “It says that we are not one of those who believe the family can be destroyed.”

Divorce is not an alien concept in the Philippines; it was legal during the U.S. and Japanese occupations in the early part of the 20th century. However, it was prohibited with the enactment of the 1949 Civil Code.

The bill to legalize divorce was first filed by Ms. Ilagan’s party in 2005 but was generally ignored. The party refiled the bill twice after that, most recently in July 2010. But it did not come up for discussion in a congressional committee until this month, together with other proposals to amend the Family Code, which was passed in 1987 to supplant sections of the Civil Code concerning marriage.

Even with the greater attention to the Philippines’ isolation on this issue after the Malta vote, the bill is not expected to be approved soon. Catholic leaders have vowed to campaign hard against it. Opponents in Congress say they will fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Rufus Rodriguez, a conservative congressman, called the bill unconstitutional and divorce unnecessary.