[Philippines: the islands of evil] Altar of Secrets Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church #4/93

This code of omerta that pervades a macho Church has spawned a “culture of silence and denial,” as Cruz describes it, where “the Church appears to be accepting with nonchalance cases of exposed aberrant clerical sexual escapades.”⁴

This Church culture came about as Church leaders “became accustomed to many and extensive sexual transgressions of clerics that they already look at such clerical indiscretions as a matter of course.” Secondly, Church officials have done nothing to impose corrective if not punitive actions on the errant priests, perpetuating the culture of silence and denial even more.

In 2002, the winds of change worldwide finally swept the local Catholic Church, when they issued the landmark message “Hope in the Midst of Crisis,” in which the bishops expressed “great sorrow and shame” and apologized for the sexual misconduct of its own members.⁵The bishops’ move came a year after Pope John Paul II issued an apology for the injustices, including sexual abuses, committed by Roman Catholic priests in the Pacific nations.⁶

In their message, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said: “We confess that grave sexual misconduct by clerics and religious [orders] in the Philippines have rocked the bark of Peter… . We your pastors humbly ask for forgiveness for the grave sins committed by some leaders against members of the flock.” The bishops, however, tempered their apology by reminding the faithful that “the great majority of the clergy are faithful to their priestly and religious commitments …”

The bishops also announced that they were in the process of drafting a protocol that sought to address various forms of sexual misconduct and abuse. The protocol, the CBCP said, was expected to “provide steps for profound renewal.”

The effect was immediate. The cleansing within the Church occurred, but not from the bottom as many had expected, but from the top.

What the bishops did not anticipate was that only a few months after they issued their apology, a brethren bishop, Crisostomo Yalung, would be forced to resign for fathering a child with a married woman. And a few months later, Bishop Teodoro Bacani followed in Yalung’s footsteps, after he was accused of sexual harassment by his secretary.

Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, media director of the CBCP, said Vatican action on Bacani’s case was swift “since it came right after the Yalung scandal.” Still, Rome’s decisions on the two resigned bishops were not the same. Yalung was sent to exile in the United States, where he now works as a counselor, while Bacani was stripped of his diocese.

The succeeding chapters (Twoand Three) will highlight cases of sexual misconduct by ranking Church officials—Yalung and Bishop Cirilo Almario. Chapter Four focuses on the diocese of Pampanga where an unusually high number of priests carry on affairs. In all these, the Church has not publicly admitted wrongdoing by its members.