No end in sight to Church-Duterte word war

Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

There seems to be no end in sight yet to the word war between President-elect Rodrigo Duterte and some members of the Catholic clergy over the former’s controversial pronouncements about the Church.

Retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz will not keep his mouth shut for as long as Duterte keeps “attacking” the Church.

In an interview with reporters yesterday, Cruz said a mutual friend of him and Duterte’s visited him a few days ago, requesting him to refrain from making any more comments against the incoming President.

“The substance of our conversation was that ‘Let us keep quiet for now. For a while, let us keep cool, so to speak, so that there will be peace.’ And I said, yes, I have no problem with that. I only said that I hope he (Duterte) will also keep quiet, and that was the agreement,” Cruz said.

“If you remember, I was not granting interviews the past weeks because of that [agreement],” he added.

Duterte apparently defied the “agreement” when he again lambasted the Church.

He even called Cruz an “idiotic bishop” for suggesting that the longtime tough-talking Davao mayor file a case against the priest that he claimed had sexually abused him during his high school days at Ateneo de Davao.

At his press conference on Thursday night, Duterte lashed at Cruz, saying:

“Then you advice, ‘If you really are a victim of abuse, why don’t you file a case?’ What a stupid statement. That was in 1950. To whom shall I file a case? This Oscar Cruz [is] another idiotic bishop. He suggests to file a case? That’s acts of lasciviousness. It prescribes in about five years, 10 years. There’s no more crime. What court shall hear it?”

Mincing no words, Duterte said Cruz was going to hell.

“The priest? He’s in hell [a] long time ago. He [already] died,” Duterte said.

Cruz retorted:

“All of a sudden, here he comes again saying this and that. I don’t think that it’s also fair that I keep quiet, especially when he speaks against the Church. Assuming he was abused and a case was not filed within the prescribed period, what can we do? Is it our fault? The nonfiling was not the doing of any bishop, it was his own doing,” Cruz said.