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Raissa Robles

Pontiff also told me clerics should stay out of politics, claims president after Vatican trip

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo yesterday claimed Pope Benedict  had endorsed her presidency and policies and said he prefers clergymen to remain apolitical.

'He is very, very encouraging towards our policies,' Mrs Arroyo told the presidential palace-run NBN 4 television channel  of her meeting with the pontiff in the Vatican on  Monday.

The Pope  even gave her a pat on the back and told her 'well done' for  scrapping capital punishment, she said.

Much of their half-hour talk centred on the Philippine situation, she said. 'I narrated to him my political reforms, including the move to change the constitution,' she said.  'I was very encouraged ... he was very supportive.'

Mrs Arroyo had declined to talk to reporters who  accompanied her to Rome. Instead, she gave a lengthy interview to the government channel.

She  said it was the Pope's wish that 'the Church should avoid politics' and 'should maintain harmonious relations with government'. She claimed she discerned that in reading the papal encyclical, entitled Deus Caritas Est, issued by Pope Benedict  himself.

Mrs Arroyo did not explain why she was talking politics with the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

Ironically, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo,  president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, recently cited the  same encyclical to justify the Church governing body's highly political statements. Monsignor Lagdameo recently branded the Arroyo government a 'subtle dictatorship'.

Under the archbishop's  leadership, the bishops recently issued a pastoral letter urging the Arroyo government to modernise the electoral process in order to minimise cheating. They  objected to the  government's plan to scrap next year's polls and  change the form of government from a presidential to a parliamentary system through a government-backed people's initiative. They also urged Mrs  Arroyo to settle questions over her legitimacy.

Mrs Arroyo's aides pointedly told the bishops to stop meddling in politics.

But on June 12, when the nation celebrated its independence day, Monsignor Lagdameo issued a rejoinder saying that while Pope Benedict's  encyclical had barred clerics from 'the world of politics', it enjoined the Church to perform its 'indirect duty ... [of] the reawakening of the moral forces'.

To further stress the point, Monsignor  Lagdameo recently called a news conference where he stressed that 'speaking on politics through moral and spiritual standpoints is a role of the bishops'.

Mrs  Arroyo's statements quoting the pontiff were met with disbelief by  clerics and nuns in Manila, who said they could no longer remain silent but 'must seek to intervene to end this vicious cycle'. More than  500 political activists, church lay leaders and journalists have been gunned down since Mrs Arroyo assumed office in January 2001.

Yesterday  outspoken Archbishop Oscar Cruz  refused to believe  the Pope  had given a blanket endorsement of the Arroyo presidency, 'because the Vatican knows everything happening in the Philippines'. 'Maybe it [the support] was only with regards to [scrapping] the death penalty,' he said. 'It doesn't mean a total support of everything the president was doing because many anomalies are taking place in our country.'



The Pope supports me, Arroyo says