President Rodrigo Duterte INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / JOAN BONDOC
MARAWI CITY—President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been criticizing priests and nuns for disagreeing with him, on Friday unraveled himself before the Maranao people here.
“I am not a Catholic,” President Duterte said in a speech at the provincial gymnasium here, where he was presented with surrendered firearms and Maute gunmen who have yielded to the military.
Duterte did not say what his religious affiliation was, but he said he had grandchildren who were Muslims because their mother, Lovelie Sangkula, was a Tausug.
Sangkula was resigned vice mayor Paolo’s former wife.
President Duterte also said his daughter Sara was a Catholic.
But he said all of them had Moro blood because of his grandmother—the mother of her late mother, Soledad—was a Maranao.
Addressing extremists, he said he could not understand why they call him infidel.
The Maute group had previously threatened to kill the President for supposedly waging war against Islam.
“That’s really not needed,” he said of the threat. “We’re all the same, Moro.” /jpv