PHILIPPINES
Tempo
January 12, 2020
Controversial “healing priest” Father Fernando Suarez can exercise his ministry again after the Vatican found him “not guilty” of sexual abuse accusations, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said yesterday.
Bishop Antonio Tobias, judicial vicar of the CBCP National Tribunal Appeals, informed the priest of the “not guilty” verdict of his case in a decree of notification dated January 6, 2020.
“By order of the Most Rev. Giacomo Morandi, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Titular Archbishop of Cerveteri, in his letter of December 13, 2019—I was instructed to notify the Rev. Fr. Fernando M. Suarez of the Apostolic Vicariate of San Jose de Occidental Mindoro of the decree of ‘not guilty’ of the accusation lodged against him of sexual abuse of minors which this National Tribunal of Appeals submitted to Rome on May 8, 2019,” read the notification.
“This means that he has been falsely accused of these crimes and, therefore, nothing now stands in the way for him to exercise his healing ministry, provided it is done properly in coordination with the ecclesiastical authority of every ecclesiastical jurisdiction,” it further read.
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