President Rodrigo Duterte warned that the Catholic Church may grow irrelevant in a few decades’ time and invited people to move to Iglesia ni Duterte instead.
“There are things which the Catholic Church must change or else it will – by the end of this, three decades from now, it becomes irrelevant. Dito na lang kayo sa bago, Iglesia ni Duterte, maganda ito,” he joked on September 5, in front of the Filipino community in Laos.
Duterte jointed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and other related summits in Vientiane, Laos.
He even asked if there were Catholic priests listening to him in the audience, before complaining about how the Church uses people’s fear of hell to restrict its followers.
“What I don’t really like is ‘yun bang takutin ka. Pagka maliit pa tayo, magpunta tayo ng impiyerno, magpunta tayo ng impiyerno, kung ano man ang sunugin ng impiyerno na,” Duterte said, as quoted by Rappler.
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The “Iglesia ni Duterte,” he said, will not have as many restrictions and lets its followers do the things normally frowned upon by other religions.
“Walang bawal. Inom, sige inom. Babae, ay, sige hanggang patayin ka ng asawa mo. Madali man na magpatay ng asawa, ‘yung husband ninyo, ‘yung ‘legal’,” he said.
“Lagyan mo ng extra two spoonfuls ‘yang kanyang ulam, ibigay mo. Two years’ time, papalpak ang kidney niyan. ‘Wag mo na i-dialysis, sabihin mo, ‘yan na sigurong suwerte mo,” he explained.
Before wrapping up this portion of his speech, he said that he was, of course, joking.
Although he was raised a Catholic, Duterte never held back when it comes to making fun of the institution.
After emerging as the apparent winner in the 2016 elections, Duterte branded the Catholic Church as the “most hypocritical institution” after the latter campaigned against him.
With his usual style of peppering his remarks with profanities, Duterte also cursed Pope Francis when he visited the Philippines in January, causing massive traffic jams all over Metro Manila.
You can watch his speech in Laos, with his talk about the Catholic Church starting at 26:30.
Sources: (rappler.com, news.abs-cbn.com, youtube.com)
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