MANILA, Philippines -- Claiming vindication, former president Joseph Estrada said on Monday the country has been suffering because the late Jaime Cardinal Sin did not heed ?God?s voice? and, instead, backed the Edsa II People Power revolt, despite a Vatican order to stay away.

?God knows how to make punishments also,? the 70-year-old Estrada told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net. ?So our country is what it is now because the head of the Church went against God?s will. Our country is not moving forward.?

Estrada was reacting to an Inquirer story quoting a highly placed source as saying that the Vatican told Sin in 2001 that it did not want the Philippine Roman Catholic Church to get involved in the anti-Estrada uprising.

Faced with the ?order? from the Vatican, Sin threatened to resign as Manila Archbishop if forced to withdraw Church support for the Edsa upheaval, the source said.

The stalemate was resolved after a meeting with Vatican representatives, according to the source.

A second Inquirer source also confirmed there was a directive from the Vatican for Sin and the rest of the Philippine clergy ?not to be partisan? during the 2001 uprising.

The second source said the order must have come from ?higher? than the Philippine desk at the Vatican?s foreign affairs office ?but I don?t think it was the Pope.? (Pope John Paul II was the pope then.)

Sin died in July 2005.

?Little by little I am vindicated and hopefully, I will be really vindicated in the end,? Estrada said.

Estrada, who was convicted of plunder last September but later won presidential pardon, maintained it was ?God speaking? when he captured the presidency in 1998 after posting one of the biggest vote margins in the history of Philippine presidential elections.

?Vox populi, vox Dei (The voice of the people is the voice of God),? Estrada reiterated.

The former president was ousted from power on January 20, 2001, following accusations of corruption.

Estrada also said he was devoting a chapter about the Vatican order to Sin in the book he was writing, which was expected to be published by the end of the year.

?Inunahan ninyo ako sa istorya (You beat me to the story). I was to reveal that in my autobiography,? he said light-heartedly, adding he knew about the Vatican order even before the fateful week when he made his gloomy exit from Malacañang.

Citing the irony of fate in politics, Estrada said that the Church that wooed him six times to enter politics in 1967 was the same Church that caused his downfall.

He recalled that a parish priest in San Juan -- Monsignor Casimiro Alvarez -- tried to convince him, when he was still a movie actor, to run for mayor. ?I finally heeded (him) on his sixth visit,? he said.

?But I don?t mean that the whole Church is to be blamed for our country?s situation now. The fault of Cardinal Sin is not the fault of the entire Church,? he said.

The Inquirer called the Embassy of the Holy See in Manila but an embassy staffer said that Papal Nuncio Edward Joseph Adams was not available for comment.

The staffer said the embassy would not comment on ?something that happened in the past.?

A senior Filipino prelate, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz, said on Monday he was sure the Vatican did not order Sin to back off from Edsa II.

?I am certain that there was no such order because the Holy Father did not need to order Cardinal Sin to do anything or not do anything. It would be enough for the Holy Father to say this and Cardinal Sin would obey. I know him (Sin) that well,? Cruz told reporters.

Cruz, who worked closely with Sin as his auxiliary bishop in Manila, said Sin revered the Pope and his obedience to the Holy See was unquestioned.

?The Cardinal was not a person who will negotiate with the Vatican if it says no to an issue,? he said.

Cruz also said the Vatican did not have any reason to order the Philippine Church to detach its support for Edsa II.

For one, he said, Sin?s focus was not on politics per se but on the moral issue concerning the Estrada administration.

Even Pope John Paul II, Cruz said, also intervened in his native country Poland to fight the spread of communism. Sin, comparatively, should also feel free to intervene in the moral dimension of the Philippine government because this was his country, said Cruz.

A source at the Archdiocese of Manila, who asked not to be identified, not being privy to the issue, said it was unlikely the Vatican frowned on Sin?s role in Edsa II.

The source said that if the Vatican had opposed Church participation, ?how come Archbishop Antonio Franco, the Apostolic Nuncio then and therefore envoy of the Pope, was present at (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo?s) oath-taking at the Edsa shrine, as pictures of the event show??

The source added that what came from the Vatican at the time was an aide memoire to the Department of Foreign Affairs containing a comment or an opinion by a minor Vatican official about the participation of the clergy in political affairs. With a report from Cynthia D. Balana