Catholic schools join call vs granting hero’s burial

CATHOLIC schools all over the country have joined mounting calls against granting a hero’s burial to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

In a statement, the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (Ceap), the national association of more than a thousand Catholic schools in the country, called on President Duterte to scrap his plan to bury Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani in Taguig City.

“President Rody, we ask that you heal this festering wound. Let this be your legacy. Please do not allow the burial of Mr. Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani. [He] does not belong in Libingan ng mga Bayani. He was not a hero,” it added.

Branding Marcos as “the country’s most infamous plunderer and tyrant,” the Ceap said the pillars upon which the Duterte administration rests—marked by a strong platform of fighting corruption and crimi- nality—would lose value if Marcos was given the undeserved honor of a hero's burial.

“We ask you to affirm to our nation’s children that wrongdoing is not something to be emulated,” the group appealed to Mr. Duterte.

The Ceap also cited reports that Marcos had faked his medals supposedly as a soldier and recalled the “torture, detention and death of thousands who dared questioned his rule.”

“He was a plunderer who was responsible for a failed economy—the effects of which we are seeing now in the oppressive poverty all around us, causing the massive criminality you are fighting so hard against,” the group said.

The group contested Mr. Duterte’s belief that a hero’s burial for Marcos would put closure to the martial law episode.

It urged Mr. Duterte to instead just let Marcos be buried in his hometown in Ilocos.