Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, already notorious for having cursed the Pope, world leaders, the European Union and the United Nations, has been branded “evil” and a “psychopath” after he called God “stupid” and a “son of a b***h” in Asia’s largest Catholic country.
Mr Duterte questioned in a televised speech on Friday the Biblical story of man’s creation and asked why God created Adam and Eve only to allow them to succumb to the temptation that destroyed their purity.
In his usual blunt style, the 73-year–old president said:
“Who is this stupid God? This son of a b***h is then really stupid. How can you rationalise a God? Do you believe?”
he asked viewers in Asia’s largest Catholic country.
The reaction to the presidential rant from leading bishops and senators was swift and condemnatory.
The president was a “madman,” charged Bishop Arturo Bastes, urging his flock to pray for an end to Mr Duterte’s “blasphemous utterances and dictatorial tendencies,” the Associated Press reported.
The president’s “tirade against God and the Bible reveals again that he is a psychological freak, a psychopath, an abnormal mind who should not have been elected as president of our civilised and Christian nation,” he added.
Antonio Trillanes, an opposition senator, described Mr Duterte as “one evil man”, retorting that his comments were:
“very much consistent with the deceitfulness, heartlessness and ruthlessness of his policies.”
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former national police chief, said he has often backed Duterte’s policies, but after the president’s utterances against God “to whom I pray every single day and with whom I’ve found solace and comfort in all my difficult times, I don’t even have to think of my choice.”
“May my God forgive him and make him atone for all his sins,”
Lacson said.
The Duterte administration on Monday remained defiant in the face of escalating criticism, trying to turn the tables on the Catholic Church by demanding it deal with the wrongdoings of priests.
“I think the declaration of the president stemmed from his bad experience when still young. He was allegedly abused by a priest,”
presidential spokesman Harry Roque told GMA News.
“This is an issue that the Church should face and perhaps it just happened that the president is one of the victims.”
He added:
“The Church cannot forget this. It should admit and ask forgiveness so that all the victims, including President Duterte, can also move on with their lives.”
Salvador Panelo, the chief presidential legal counsel, claimed the president did not insult God but was just questioning Christianity’s theory of creation. He insisted that Mr Duterte had the right to express his views on religion, the Philippine Star reported
“He didn’t call God stupid. What he said was the theory of creation as expounded by the writers of the Bible is a stupid proposition,” he said in a statement.
But the spat comes amid increasing tension between President Duterte and leaders of the Catholic Church who have criticised his brutal war on drugs.
The murder of three priests since December has also given rise to fears that members of the clergy have been deliberately targeted for their stance on human rights.
The church and political leaders have condemned the “culture of impunity” that has flourished during the country’s war on drugs, and which they suspect may have paved the way for the killings.
“We should be alarmed,” Father Jerome Secillano, a spokesman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in an interview with Al Jazeera in early June.
“Killing is a form of violence. We do not want violence to permeate in our society. We want a violence-free society. We want our citizens to be freely roaming around, with a sense of security and safety.”
Sources:
Telegraph
Star Online
