CEBU CITY (PHILIPPINES)
SunStar [Cebu City, Philippines]
February 2, 2025
By Pachico A. Seares
THE public must appreciate that Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, in his Jan. 30, 2025 statement, acknowledges that sexual abuses of some priests against minors “wound the Catholic faith” and the Church is “fully committed to support the survivors and their families.”
The victims and their families need a lot more than that and they want to know about it from the church leader.
- Aside from assurance of spiritual healing — as the Lord “heals the broken-hearted and binds their wounds” — the Church can compensate materially the survivors and help in their rehabilitation, without the force of litigation.
- Turn into concrete the promise of support for the abused children and their families “to be heard and get justice” by adopting a plain and clear process, marked by an efficient system of reporting the abuse and the action on it, whether within the Church or before government prosecutors and the courts.
- Other than rehabilitating the offender and preventing future offenses, each parish and church organization can help create or change conditions so as not to make the setting conducive to sexual abuse or, worse, repetition of the offense by serial offenders. Church leaders must specify conditions for the return to priestly duties by any priest suspected or found guilty of sexual abuse, particularly his tasks and where he is reassigned.
The bishops know the areas of concern, topped by the practice of assigning suspects or repeaters to assignments where they teach or manage the young. Which Archbishop didn’t, or did just barely, in his statement.
An old woman’s death in Dumanjug sets off some questions.
Living, dying alone: An 84-year-old grandmother in Dumanjug, Cebu had siblings and grandchildren and yet lived alone. She had no one with her when ailment/accident/violence struck her. Her body was found Saturday, Feb. 1. 2025, with the head separated from her body. No one was there to help when tragedy happened or to attend to her body when death came. A police theory is that her body had so decomposed that the head fell off by itself or when disturbed by a dog or dogs.
Filipinos are reputed for compassion in taking care of ailing or aging close kin. Apparently not the relatives of this woman. Which was an aspect of the story interesting enough not to leave out but was skipped.
Do dogs attack people? There are recorded cases of dogs attacking and even eating humans, their owners included. (In the US, every person has about 1.3 percent chance of being bitten by a dog, with 4.5 million people inflicted with dog bites annually. In the Philippines, 317,065 people are bitten by dogs in one year but in most cases, dog bites go unreported.)
The police theory didn’t suggest an attack but a dog or dogs disturbing the body and nudging it off because it was already decomposed. At least here, the suspected action occurred after the woman died and was not cause of death.
Tragedy may be reported but… Not the gory images. At least three broadcasters separately reported the incident with a breaker, then a follow-up. The story was stunning enough, made more so by the image of a head severed from the body.
Every person is assumed to know what offends the senses; every journalist is required to know what cannot be shared with the public. In news organizations, there’s an editor or the equivalent of one who gate-keeps content, either blocking publication or obscuring the image. In the Dumanjug case, they blurred images of the body and the head. The broadcasters apparently decided individually but submitted to the clamor against the gore by taking down the post or making changes in the photos.
Getting, evading the consequence. Call-outs from a number of internet users focused on two of the three radio journalists who posted the news in social media. How about their station manager, asked a consumer. The two broadcasters were on their own as they used their personal accounts in publishing the story. Yet, each mentioned his news organization or is known to be a member of, and associated with, a media outlet.