President-elect to Apologize to Pope for Calling Him ‘son of a Whore’
By Max Bearak
Throughout Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential campaign, it didn’t much seem like the renegade Davao City mayor cared if what he was saying was offensive or politically correct. He “joked” about not getting the chance to rape an Australian minister who was taken hostage, sexually assaulted and killed in his country in 1989. He also said he’ll execute 100,000 criminals. And, while Pope Francis was visiting Manila last January, causing massive traffic jams in the capital, Duterte said he felt like calling up the spiritual leader of most of his country’s population and telling him: “Pope, son of a whore, go home! Don’t visit anymore.” But now that he’s been elected, his tone, at least toward the pope, has softened. On Thursday, Duterte’s spokesman said a trip to Rome was in the works, during which the then-president would “explain to the pope and ask for forgiveness.” He didn’t include a schedule, but said that it was one of Duterte’s “top priorities.” Almost 90 percent of the Philippines’ population is Roman Catholic, but Duterte says that while he was raised in the faith, he no longer practices it. He has often spoken strongly in favor of birth control and contraception, which puts him at odds with the official Vatican line. Catholic leaders in the Philippines were quick to denounce Duterte’s comments at the time, but that had little effect at the polls. He used the phrase “son of a whore” liberally on the campaign trail and lobbed it at the current president, Benigno Aquino III, too Later, in an attempt to moderate the impact of his statement about the pope, he called it a “stray bullet” that issued from his propensity to use foul language. The Washington Post’s Emily Rauhala noted the appeal that his common language had on voters. “For his legions of fans in the Philippines, Duterte’s brash comments are as appealing as his promise to completely stamp out crime and corruption in just six months,” she wrote. “They see him as a superman ready to challenge the status quo and willing to stand up for the little guy.” Duterte will officially become president on June 30. For the Catholic Church, there’s another interesting aspect to Duterte’s electoral victory: He may well be the first survivor of clerical sexual abuse in the Church ever to become a national head of state. Duterte has indicated that the abuse took place at the Ateneo de Davao High School, a Jesuit-run school, in the late 1950s, naming American Jesuit priest Paul Falvey as his abuser. Falvey, who died in 1975, has also been accused of various acts of abuse in the Los Angeles area between 1959 and 1975, claims which the Jesuits in the United States have paid roughly $16 million to settle. Records indicate that Falvery was working in Asia in the 1950s before returning to Los Angeles in 1959, but aren’t definitive about whether he was at the Davao school during the time Duterte was enrolled. “It was a case of fondling — you know what — which he did during confession, that’s how we lost our innocence… It happened during our generation, two years ahead of us and two years following us,” Duterte said, saying that the priest also molested other high school students at the time. The president-elect also said he had no intention of suing the Church for damages. Asked why he hadn’t made a complaint at the time, Duterte said, “I was young then and I was afraid of what would happen.” “How could we complain? We were scared,” Duterte said, stressing that fear got the better of any intent to come forward, especially since they were freshmen and might get “whacked.” (Crux staff also contributed to this report.)
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