Holy see

Butuan Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos says he welcomes the chance of going to the Senate to clear his name. In fact he wants to deliver a privilege speech there. He won’t educate the senators, he quips, he’ll convert them.

Well, he has already had too many privileges in life for anyone to wish to grant him another, even if that is only the privilege of words. As to converting the senators, to what? To the Dark Side? Too late in the case of some of them.

De Dios Pueblos really has nothing to say that he hasn’t already said in his letter to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2009, and said quite sublimely. That letter is a classic in the art of solicitation. It begins by invoking God. God has been pleased to see him live to his 66th birthday, God has been pleased with his work, God would like him to continue that work by having his benefactor on earth, well, give him a nice car on his birthday.

“It is in this view that I am asking a favor from Your Excellency. At present, I really need a brand-new car, possibly a 4 x 4, which I can use to reach the far-flung areas of Caraga. I hope you will never fail to give a brand new car which would serve as your birthday gift to me. For your information, I have with me a 7-year-old car which is not anymore in good running condition. Therefore, this needs to be replaced very soon.”

He ends by saying: “Be assured of my constant support.”

Some people are truly mga anak ng Diyos. On their birthdays, other bishops get only a card, De Dios Pueblos gets a car. What a difference a “d” makes.

What can De Dios Pueblos possibly add to that? The only thing I myself can add to it is to wonder how anyone, however he is someone whose thoughts constantly turn to heaven, can possibly run a car to the ground in seven years. I have an 11-year-old car and though I am not the most scrupulous maintainer of vehicles, I am happy to report that I can still carry out my journalistic work with it. Even taxis last longer.

Of course the roads of Caraga are nowhere like those of Metro Manila, but we only have his word that he takes his gifts to places that guarantee this astonishing rate of obsolescence. Had Arroyo lasted longer, which was her intention with the constant support of bishops like De Dios Pueblos, the PCSO would be supplying him with another brand new 4×4 in 2016 to do God’s work.

It’s a wonder no lightning bolt has yet streaked from the sky to register God’s objections to being dragged into this sordid business.

But Mercedes Tuason, ambassador to the Holy See, sees only unholy thoughts in all this. “What I feel bad about is that they are attacking the bishops, saying many things without solid proof,” she said. “I’m sure whenever they get money from PCSO, they give it to the poor.”

What can one say? Tuason gives whole new meanings to her work. For her, being ambassador to the Holy See means to see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. De Dios Pueblos’ letter is not solid proof? Bishop Martin Jumoad’s Mitsubishi Strada is not solid proof? The various SUVs and other gratuities given to Arroyo’s favorite bishops are not solid proof?

What takes the cake is that all this is being justified not just in the name of God but in the name of the poor. Tuason is certain that whatever the bishops got, they used for the poor, a certainty we take it that comes from her proximity to infallibility. That is one holy seeing, though I doubt it originates from tongues of fire. I doubt many faithful will find the concept of bishops soliciting SUVs to serve the poor as a sign that God works in mysterious ways. I suspect most will just find it hilarious—and have problems remaining faithful.

In fact what it reminds me of is that poster Imelda Marcos had during her time, the one on malnutrition. The poster featured a grimy and emaciated kid in the background and Imelda in all her bauble-d glory in the foreground. The idea was to show that the First Lady would take the lead in plucking the poor from the jaws of hunger. But what came across was another message entirely: The opulence of the one was the cause, the misery of the other was the effect. The posters did not grace the walls and electrical posts of the city for very long.

It’s the same thing here. The SUVs of the bishops are the cause, the poverty of their flock is the effect.

But in the end, what’s truly sad, to borrow Tuason’s understatement of the decade, is not that the bishops are being attacked but that Arroyo’s bishops are attacking their very calling and subverting the standing of the true shepherds among them. Their existence is a slap on the face of the great bishops of the past and present, who lived and are living up to being princes of the Church not by wearing princely raiment but by displaying kingly hearts. Bishops like Francisco Claver of Mountain Province, Antonio Fortich of Bacolod, Sergio Utleg of Tuguegarao, Manuel Purruganan of Isabela, Antonio Ledesma of Cagayan de Oro, and Julio Labayen of Infanta.

They were/are the ones who have walked with the lowest of the low, who have broken bread with the wretchedest of the wretched, who have given everything of themselves to serve the last, the least and the lost. They were/are the ones who have fought tyranny and built churches of the poor, by the poor and for the poor. They have never needed a Strada or a Montero to straddle the world like a colossus, they needed only the strength of their convictions to cleanse the temple of the merchants.

They are the ones whose memory or living work Arroyo’s bishops spit on by having the gall to suggest they solicited princely cars to succor paupers. As does the ambassador to the Holy See when she attempts to sanctify it. That’s not holy see.

That’s holy sheesh.