PHILIPPINES
Asian Sentinel

Written by John Berthelsen
TUESDAY, 13 AUGUST 2013

A devastating look at sex, politics and money in the Philippine Catholic Church by Aries C. Rufo. Published by the Journalism for Nation Building Foundation, Pasig City, Philippines. Soft cover, 309 pp. Available at bookstores in the Philippines

Aries C. Rufo, a prize-winning Filipino journalist, was once a devout Catholic who as a youth “loved staying inside the church for it offered refuge from the punishing heat outside. The airy atmosphere and the deafening silence were pure ecstasy,” he writes. As a boy he seriously contemplated entering the seminary although the desire to do so eventually waned.

After decades as a journalist, some of it spent covering the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)?, he sat down to write this book, Altar of Secrets: Sex, Politics and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church.

“While the Church…