MANILA, Philippines – Reacting on the recent saga of former president Rodrigo Duterte with the International Criminal Court (ICC), one of the country’s most prominent Catholic archbishops said it was not God’s will for the country to be divided.
“The devil wants us disunited and splintered. The mission of Satan is to crush unity and fracture our wholeness. We have lost the ability to love as we argue. We have even given up reason and intelligence as we argue. We have shaken away our responsibility for the truth as we disagree with one another. This is tragic for us. It leads to hell on earth, not redemption,” Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said in his pastoral letter.
The message will be read in the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan during anticipated Masses on Saturday, March 15, then on Sunday, March 16.
“We have been drinking water from many polluted wells of fake news, blind sentimentalism, vulgarity, violence, and mob rule. Such polluted drinks poison our spirit and slowly cause the decay of morality and the loss of rationality in our society,” Villegas added.
Duterte was arrested on Tuesday, March 11 over crimes against humanity through the virtue of the warrant issued by the ICC. He became the first former Philippine president and Asian head of state to be arrested over crimes against humanity. The former president, whose drug war killed nearly 30,000 people based on human rights groups’ tallies, is already at the ICC to face his case.
Villegas’ message was timely as the country was seeing a number of protests led by Duterte supporters who opposed the former president’s arrest. Wearing green clothes, Duterte’s supporters organized a motorcade and gathered at Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila on Saturday to call for Duterte’s return and to criticize Marcos’ decision to hand over his predecessor.
Even at the height of Duterte’s arrest on Tuesday, his supporters already gathered outside Villamor Air Base, where he was detained before being flown to the Netherlands. What triggered his supporters were disinformation about the supposed lack of due process, warrant, and the false issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the arrest.
The Supreme Court had already announced it junked the TRO request, and the Philippine government, including the police, had already explained that they observed due process when they arrested the former president. Even legal experts said the operation was “by the book” and within ICC’s liberal rules.
On vigilance, patriotism
Amid the disinformation surrounding the arrest, the Catholic archbishop also reminded Filipinos to examine their sources of information. Villegas said that “with sobriety, hopefully, comes critical thinking,” adding that the basis of people’s words and actions must only be the truth.
Villegas also encouraged the people to remember the “pitiful tears and the restless moans” of drug war victims.
“We all have contributed to this pandemic of criminality and sin. Let us begin with self-critique and open ourselves to a new kind of patriotism based on faith, not on ideology or partisan politics. The path to heroism begins with contrition,” he noted.
“Lastly, I appeal for the widening of space for sobriety by choosing abstinence from desiring to destroy one another. It does not help to gloat and rejoice in the sufferings of others. Let us lower down our bows and arrows of legalese; lay down the guns of our tongues and see that, before these divisions of politics and opinions, we were one in humanity, one in nationhood, and one Lupang Hinirang, one bayang magiliw (beloved country),” the archbishop added. – Rappler.com