Televangelist Pat Robertson told a woman on Tuesday that she had caused her own cancer by harboring ill feelings against her abusive father.

“My father abused my mom for years,” a viewer named Barb explained to Robertson in a letter. “One day he came home and called me horrid names. Years went by; I felt so bad so, on the advice of my pastor, I went to him and apologized for anything I had ever done wrong.”

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“I was tossed out, literally, so I disowned him,” she added. “I have since had cancer twice and have not been contacted by him. How do I deal with the heartache?”

Robertson asserted that the situation “could be the cause of that cancer.”

“You might have a feeling of loss, an emptiness, and you’ve sort of turned off the tremendous system that you have to prevent — there’s an immune system that will function when you are forgiving,” he opined.

The TV preacher pointed out that God would one day punish the father “horribly,” but “all you have to do is forgive him.”

“You cannot keep harboring it, it will hurt yourself,” he said. “So, let it go.”

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Watch the video below from CBN’s The 700 Club, broadcast March 18, 2014.