Tea, Monsignor?

PHILIPPINES
Inquirer

By Michael L. Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
10:32 pm | Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

My last few columns have been quite serious with martial law and blood ivory, so let’s take a break today and talk about lighter matters.

“Lighter” is relative. I will still have to refer to the National Geographic article by Bryan Christy about ivory trafficking, where a Monsignor Cristobal Garcia was implicated by the author as a particularly avid collector. In my column I wrote about how the monsignor had gotten into trouble in the United States, was dismissed, came home and “became a bishop,” which I presumed was the case because he was a monsignor.

Three clergymen, no less, wrote me to clarify that a monsignor is not necessarily a bishop. Let me share parts of their e-mails.

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