Story highlights Ordinary Filipinos have lost their way, says Father Amado Picardal

President Rodrigo Duterte: Catholic Church "full of shit"

Manila, Philippines (CNN) "A life of sufferings, a life of killings. Is this the will of God?"

Father Amado Picardal does not flinch from the enormity of the question. As a priest in Metro Manila, he's confronted nightly with the bloodshed of President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war, which police say has now claimed more than 7,000 lives.

Picardal refuses to place that toll at God's doorstep.

He says there is a "blood lust" in the country, encouraged by propaganda, deceit and a President with "a messiah complex." At the Baclaran Church in the capital, he preaches against the killings.

Religion is an incredibly powerful force in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, and many of its adherents here attend Mass regularly.