Lacson says he can only pray Duterte ‘would be forgiven for all his sins’

At times, Senator Panfilo Lacson said he thinks of President Rodrigo Duterte as “God’s gift to a benighted land.”

But when the President attacked God anew, he can only pray that the chief executive would be forgiven for all his sins.

“In many conflicts with his political adversaries, I took his side more than I did not, even when sometimes I had my doubts because I believed he was different from all the presidents who led before him,” Lacson, who belongs to the majority bloc in the Senate, said in a statement.

“At times I thought he was God’s gift to a benighted land, hoping the elusive change for the better has finally come to our country under his leadership,” he said.

But between Duterte and God, Lacson said: “I don’t even have to think of my choice.”

“May my God forgive him and make him atone for all his sins,” the senator added.

Lacson was reacting to the President’s latest tirades against the Catholic Church where he called God “stupid.”

The President, in a speech during the opening of the 2018 National ICT Summit in Davao City on Friday, questioned, in particular, God’s logic in creating the first humans on earth — Adam and Eve — only to destroy them by sending a forbidden fruit.

“So God was lonely, so he created paradise, and that’s planet Earth. And God said, ‘I will create man,’ so there was Adam. God found that Adam was lonely, so he took one of his ribs and created woman. But God doubted his creation, so he tested it. He called a snake and told it to give an apple to Eve.  Eve ate it and gave it to Adam. And so malice was born,” Duterte said.

“Who is this stupid God? You created something perfect, and then you think of an event that would destroy the quality of your work. How can you rationalize that God? How can you believe him? So now we’re all born with original sin. Even in the womb, we already have sinned. What kind of religion is that?” the President added.

READ: Duterte on God, Catholics and Adam’s apple