Catholics fasting to protest Duterte

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Catholic bishops on Monday called for fasting and prayers after President Rodrigo Duterte called God “stupid” and questioned God’s existence in profane remarks that set the foul-mouthed leader on a collision course with Asia’s largest Catholic church.

Archbishop Romulo Valles and the association of bishops that he heads called for a day of prayers on July 16 to invoke “God’s mercy and justice on those who have blasphemed God’s holy name, those who slander and bear false witness and those who commit murder or justify murder as a means for fighting criminality.”

Starting July 17, the bishops asked Filipino Catholics to join bishops in three more days of prayers with fasting and almsgiving.

Duterte has had a thorny relationship with Catholic bishops, who have criticized his bloody anti-drug crackdown and vulgar language and expressed alarm over the killings of three priests in gun attacks in recent months. In televised speeches, the 73-year-old leader has often lashed out at Catholic bishops, recalling reports of sexual abuses by members of the clergy, including a foreign Jesuit priest, who, he said, fondled him and other students in a Catholic university.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines did not name Duterte in a carefully worded but highly critical “pastoral exhortation,” but the allusion to the president and his tough anti-crime crackdowns, .

To “those who arrogantly regard themselves as wise in their own estimation and the Christian faith as nonsense, those who blaspheme our God as stupid, Saint Paul’s words are to the point: ‘For the stupidity of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength,’” the bishops said.

Amid the animosity, Duterte’s office invited Valles for a dialogue with the president, Valles said.

Presidential aides later announced that the two met for 30 minutes at the presidential palace, with Duterte agreeing “to a moratorium on statements about the church.”