[Philippines: the islands of evil] Altar of Secrets Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church #3/93

TUCKED SOMEWHERE IN METRO MANILA WAS A GATED orphanage run by nuns. Lush trees and greenery covered the sprawling area, providing a fresh respite from the urban jungle just outside its premises. At the time of my visit in August 2012, a few workers were repairing some of the structures and buildings, while volunteer staff did the laundry and the cooking.

But this is no ordinary orphanage. It was (or still might be) home to some of the children fathered by Catholic priests. The sister in charge confirmed that they had housed children whose fathers were priests. “We accept the children regardless of who their fathers are,” the sister said. But she clarified, “We have no children sired by priests right now.”

She spoke these words normally, as if answering an ordinary question. After all, an orphanage is an orphanage, a refuge of infants and children seen as a burden or shame by their fathers and/or mothers.

Inside the orphanage, the nun led us to a newly constructed one-storey building that served as the nursery for newborns. They also had a nursery school. She said it was by the grace of God that they were able to take care of the children before they were sent to their foster parents.

Pressed to confirm reports that the orphanage served as a halfway house for women impregnated by priests, the soft-spoken nun said it was not the issue. “The issue is to give these children a decent future.”

Priests fathering children, violating their vow of continence and celibacy, is a phenomenon that seems to have lost its shock value. Sure, some people are still scandalized, but even Church higher-ups have accepted this as a matter of course. In fact, the Archdiocese of Manila has an allocation for financial support to children fathered by members of the clergy.

In some areas, like in Pampanga, people have such a forgiving attitude that they have been willing to gloss over the extra-curricular activities of their parish priests. Priests are still human, some argue, and they are not immune from the frailties of man.

In Marbel diocese, which covers the provinces of South Cotabato, Sarangani, General Santos City, and some parts of Sultan Kudarat, a journalist says he knows of at least 15 priests who have sired children. “Some of them are still active in the ministry. In one case, I even served as [a] bridge between the priest and the woman. I know [this] because they are my personal friends. Sometimes, we go to girlie joints for ‘pastoral visits.’”¹In one instance, after a priest died, two women showed up to claim the body.

Priests during a plenary assemby

A few of these closet fathers had voluntarily left the priesthood and gotten married. Some became politicians.

Priests are under the administrative control and jurisdiction of the diocese where they are assigned or incardinated. (Incardination means a clergy is placed under the jurisdiction of a bishop or an ecclesiastical superior.) As an autonomous body, distinct and separate from other dioceses (but still in union with the Universal Church), sanctions and penalties against priests violating their vow of celibacy largely depend on the bishops.²

There are 86 archdioceses, dioceses, and vicariates in the country, each represented by an archbishop or a bishop.³A few are strict, like former Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who during his term in Pampanga defrocked a number of priests who were having affairs—but some are forgiving and benevolent, like Cruz’s successor, Archbishop Paciano Aniceto.

To a large extent, the Church has also shoved under the rug the growing number of sexual-misconduct cases, misdeeds and abuses committed by priests. In a stroke of luck, if one may call it that, the Philippine Church has been spared the sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere in the world.

In some cases, sexual-abuse cases by priests are kept from the public eye; the cases that get reported in the media soon die down, with Church officials clamping down on information, silencing Church officials who are privy to the case. Other priests would refuse to discuss any details.