PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte warned clerics against using God or their pulpits in attacking him, a day after his meeting with Davao Archbishop Romulo Valles, the head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

“There is a separation of power between any church and state. Do not include God on the platform of your criticism on your attack [against me] because when I answer, if you include God in the issue, you son of a bitch I will kill you,” Duterte said in a speech during the national Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Summit 2018 in Clark Freeport Zone, Pampanga.

“I have tried to answer. There is a separation of powers, why are you f*cking the name of the Lord against me?” he added.





Duterte once again said that his god was different from the “stupid” God of Christianity.

“My god is forgiving. My god is not rude. My god does not curse. As a matter of fact, my god does not say anything aside from the ten commandments. And then when you use God to say that I’d go to hell, you know my God never created hell because if he created hell, he must be stupid God. My God is not stupid to create man just to burn him in hell. I do not believe in that,” Duterte said.

Later, he said his god was the millions of Filipinos who voted for him.

“I tell you, give me a religious guy who went everywhere – north, south, west. But when you are, take a picture of mother earth from above, there is no more northwest, southwest. Where is that God?” Duterte added.

Speaking to reporters after the event, Duterte denied he broke the moratorium on tirades against the Church that he had agreed to in his meeting with Valles

“Yes, [I promised the moratorium, but] I am not attacking the Church. What I said was, if you use religion as a format… and I was not referring to any religion, look, I never named any religion,” Duterte said.

The President added that his promise of silence would not prevent him from “just saying his truth.”