Vindicated

"Fr. Suarez wants to continue being of service to all those who need his healing hand."

 

The good news is that Father Fernando Suarez, known far and wide, local and overseas, as the “healing priest,” has been cleared by the Vatican of charges of “sexual molestation.” That case filed six years ago stemmed from an allegation that Suarez “sexually molested” two altar boys while he was in Ilin island in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro where he set up a community of believers while planning to put up a huge shrine of the Virgin Mary in the island which was along the navigation route for inter island shipping. That would have been a  huge undertaking, meant to be a religious destination place and a tourist attraction similar to the huge Jesus Christ figure overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. 

Dated January 6, the decree of notification issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (essentially the Catholic Church’s adjudicator for men of the cloth) directed the authorities of the Catholic Church in the Philippines to inform Suarez that “he was not guilty of the allegations of sexually abusing teenagers (the altar boys) in March 2014.”

That decree signed by Bishop Antonio Tobias, retired Novaliches Bishop, who now heads the National Tribunal of Appeals of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), 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.”

This means Father Suarez has gotten back all of the rights and privileges of being a priest – and a healing priest at that.

What is important now is for him to “coordinate properly” with the highest church authority in every jurisdiction where he intends to practice his God-given healing powers. This is well and good. After all, Suarez has been in demand from all sectors, and from every person from all walks of life who has seen or heard or been a beneficiary of his healing powers. 

The key is “coordination”—which I am sure after six years being in the wilderness, the good priest will now be more than willing to undertake. As he reiterated in a recent interview he has “forgiven all his accusers and those who blocked his healing ministry.” Despite all the lies and heartaches he had suffered over the past six years, Fr. Suarez wants to continue being of service to all those who need his healing hand.

As he said after reiterating his having forgiven his detractors, this Vatican edict is a triumph for the Catholic Church – an institution which has been itself rocked by similar allegations of molestation by very prominent church authorities in various jurisdictions including the United States, Australia and Europe. This should now open up new avenues for healing, in and out of the Church, and provide for a way towards strengthening of the faith and the foundations of the Catholic Church itself.    

Unforgivable

Unforgivable. This is all that we can say with that “mistake” of the Iranian military—as finally admitted by Iranian authorities—that indeed the Ukrainian airline carrying 167 passengers was felled by a missile fired from a field unit. This happened in the aftermath of the strike by US military drones which killed Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani. 

After days of hemming and hawing, the Iranian military said the incident occurred during the missile strike it launched against US bases in Iraq immediately after the Soleimani killing. Apparently, the plane which took off from Tehran was mistaken for a US military attack plane about to neutralize the missile system which formed part of the network of systems given the go signal to rain all of those missiles on US bases in Iraq. Ït strayed into the missile path” was the very lame excuse of  Iranian commanders. 

With this admission, it behooves the Iranian authorities not only to arrange for compensation for the victims and, perhaps, equally as important, get those responsible for this mistaken strike face justice. Also, the authorities should open up the investigation of the incident to third parties and relevant Ukrainian authorities. That way, this incident can be properly laid to rest and the necessary recompense properly issued.  

In the end, what is as important is for all concerned to get this break out conflict between the US and Iran, to be settled not by arms but on the table with all the needed diplomatic assistance it deserves. After being on the brink of an all-out war, there should be a much- needed push by the international community to get the parties to settle down and, when circumstances warrant, talk. Not raise arms and rain more missiles or inject more weapons of destruction on the already-ravaged Middle East front.