PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Monday questioned God for allowing the people to suffer in the face of injustice.
Defending his preference for the reimposition of the death penalty as retribution for crimes, Duterte questioned the existence of God.
“The problem is, I ask you, what if there is no God?… When a one-year-old or an18-month baby is taken from the mother’s arm, brought under a jeep and raped and killed, where is God?”
“And in Syria, women and children who do not want to sex with the ISIS, they are burned. So, where is God? My God, where are you?”
While raised with Catholic values, Duterte asked why God would allow pain to be inflicted on others.
“I believe in God, but that is my perpetual question to him. Where were you when we needed you? It’s not enough to say, at the end of the day, at the end of the world, He shall come to judge the living and the dead. What will be the purpose of all of that, if the heartache, sorrows and agony have already been inflicted upon the human beings in this world?”
Duterte, who publicly cursed Pope Francis after blaming him for getting stuck in traffic, Duterte said he was sexually abused as a child at the hands of a Catholic priest.
Duterte said that while Filipinos are taught as Catholics to acknowledge God’s presence, he questioned him for doing nothing about the world’s injustices.
“We are always taught, that’s life, that everything begins and ends with God,” he said. “So God knew at that time when he created this planet that these things will happen. So my God, why did you do it?”
