The Palace on Wednesday said the death threats some Catholic bishops and priest have received could be the work of pranksters or anti-administration “trolls” bent on discrediting the government.
In an interview on radio dzBB, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the threats, which Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle had informed the President about, needed to be investigated.
The threats were reported after the President encouraged the public in December to rob and kill “useless and rich Catholic bishops and priests.”
Since then, the Palace has depicted Duterte’s remarks as “an exaggeration.”
After receiving Tagle’s message, Duterte appealed to the public not to take his previous exhortation too seriously.
On Tuesday, Caloocan City Bishop Pablo David was supposed to receive the Ka Pepe Diokno Human Rights Awards in De La Salle University but skipped the awarding ceremony after receiving death threats on his phone.
Contradicting the Palace, opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros said President Rodrigo Duterte should be blamed for the death threats received by clergymen.
She said these threats are a direct result of the same threats that Duterte himself made against Caloocan Bishop Pablo David last year.
“They are also the consequences of the violent verbal attacks of the President on the Catholic Church and its religious leaders in light of its strong critique of the present administration’s bloody and abusive war on drugs,” Hontiveros said.
“They further assert the culture of impunity to try to silence valid Church-led criticisms of state policies, particularly those with implications on human rights and due process,” she added.
Another opposition senator, Leila de Lima, said the Catholic Church cannot trust Duterte when he says that bishops and priests should not be harmed, and that those who harm them will have to deal with him.
De Lima said no one in this Catholic country, whether politician or ordinary citizen, had ever had it on the agenda to kill bishops and priests until Duterte started it.
“Strange as it may seem, the President telling himself not to carry out his threat to kill bishops is not entirely unexpected,” she said.
READ: Duterte takes up cudgels for priests
The detained senator also noted that Duterte is toying with officials of the Catholic Church with his sick jokes that can only come from a sick mind.
“What is worrying is that Duterte’s jokes can be taken seriously by his executioners who have already reiterated the same death threats to several clergymen,” she said.
READ: Palace washes hands of ‘threats’