Last year, I wrote that for many Filipinos, faith and politics live in the same house but in different rooms. We know the way to the “God room” by heart: Sunday mass, novena, rosary, fiesta, processions. We also know where the “politics room” is: election season, rallies, Facebook lives, family debates over who to vote for, and kung sinong kandidato ang mas malaki mag bigay.

The rooms themselves aren’t strange. What’s strange is how good we’ve become at pretending the walls are soundproof.

In the God room, we repeat what we’ve heard since childhood. Life is sacred. Love your enemies. Forgive seventy times seven. In the politics room, we laugh along when a leader talks about bodies, killing, and even digging up a corpse and throwing it into the West Philippine Sea.

We tell ourselves these are separate realities. Same house, but we move between corners as if nothing carries over.

SARA IN THE GOD ROOM

When Sara Duterte walked into San Pedro Cathedral for the “Bring Him Home” mass, it looked like a simple scene of a daughter praying for her father. She sat with family, listened to the homily, followed the responses like everyone else.

This isn’t new for her.

She records messages for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, telling Catholics to show mercy and compassion to people facing injustice. She releases statements on big religious feasts, reminding people to trust God’s plan, to embrace humility in hard times. Her public image is very at home with candles, saints, Marian language, and the language of faith during crisis.

If that was the only angle we saw, it would be easy to say: she’s a practicing Catholic. She goes to mass, speaks the words, knows the gestures.

In a country where most people grew up with the same rituals, that kind of familiarity earns instant trust.

SARA IN THE OTHER ROOM

Step into the other room of that same house and the tone shifts.

In October 2024, Sara Duterte publicly recounted threatening to dig up Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s remains and throw them into the West Philippine Sea if attacks on her family continued. She said she sent that in a group chat with Senator Imee Marcos. It was a warning, not a vague rant.

Around that period, she also told journalists about imagining President Marcos being beheaded. She described it as a picture in her mind that kept coming back as their relationship in government deteriorated.

Then came November 2024. On Facebook Live, she narrated how she had spoken to someone and told him that if she were killed, he should kill the president, the First Lady, and the Speaker of the House. She named them: BBM, Liza Araneta-Marcos, Martin Romualdez. She added that he should not stop until they are dead. “No joke, no joke.”

These accounts are detailed. Names, instructions, conditions. Enough for the NBI to summon her and for impeachment efforts to form around those words.

You don’t need to stretch to see the contrast. The same person who stands inside a church and talks about mercy also tells stories about kill orders and threats against specific people.

WHAT I WROTE ABOUT HER FATHER

When I wrote about Rodrigo Duterte and religious support, I was trying to understand how priests, pastors, and ordinary churchgoers could keep backing a man whose drug war left so many dead. People were afraid of crime. They hated the corruption and the sense that elites were untouchable. Many felt the killings were a brutal answer to a broken system.

Some church leaders spoke up directly. Others used softer language, condemning violence in general while avoiding naming him outright. Plenty of ordinary believers went to mass in the morning and defended the drug war online later that day.

That earlier piece was really about the same house. The person who receives communion and then cheers on “tokhang” as a necessary evil. The church that absorbs the tension because challenging it openly would mean confronting both the president and the conscience of the people in the pews.

Sara steps into that story as the next chapter, not a completely new book.

WHEN COMPARTMENTALIZATION DEEPENS

With Rodrigo Duterte, his defenders often reached for one line: that he was going after criminals. They framed the bloodshed as part of a “war” against drug syndicates, something brutal but, in their minds, aimed at a specific group. It was a dangerous logic, but you could see how frightened people arrived there.

With Sara Duterte, the pattern looks different.

The threats she herself described were focused on political figures she knows well: the sitting president, his wife, the Speaker of the House. These are not nameless “criminals.” These are colleagues, rivals, people she interacts with in state functions.

No law-and-order framing can cover that. What shows up is personal rage, deep political conflict, and a willingness to describe killing as a possible response.

Yet the religious presentation stays intact.

She continues to attend mass. She continues to release feast-day messages about mercy, empathy, and generosity, and to invite people to trust in God. The public sees both sets of actions, often without holding them in the same mental space.

The house is the same. The hallway between the rooms just became easier to ignore.

WHEN CHURCH BECOMES A BACKDROP

In that earlier article, I talked about how religious spaces can turn into backdrops for political stories. A photo with a priest, a hand on a Bible, a rosary on camera—these images travel well in a country where Catholic symbols are everywhere.

Now, look at what happens when Sara Duterte shows up in church around the anniversary of her father’s arrest. She calls it kidnapping. She casts him as a victim. Around her, you see clergy, religious symbols, and the language of prayer.

The risk for the Church here is real.

If it stays completely silent, it can end up giving the impression that this is all normal. That you can threaten people with death, or relish the idea of desecrating a body, and still walk into the sanctuary with no reckoning at all.

Filipinos are used to politicians being present in religious events. But we haven’t fully worked through what it does to our idea of faith when those same politicians use violent language and nothing in the religious space seems to push back.

WHAT CATHOLIC TEACHING POINTS TO

I’m not here to declare the state of anyone’s soul. Hindi ko trabaho yon and I have no right to do it.

But Catholics don’t need advanced theology to understand how serious these things are. The faith is clear about the value of life. Planning to have someone killed, or taking delight in such plans, sits in direct conflict with that.

The sacraments are supposed to be places of honesty. Confession, communion, prayer—these are moments where we bring the whole self, including the parts we’re not proud of, and face them.

I say this as someone who spent time in seminary. We were formed to treat communion with real fear and reverence: if you’re conscious of grave sin, you go to confession first. You don’t line up casually. A lot of ordinary Catholics carry some version of that instinct too, even if the theology isn’t perfect—they hesitate when they know something is seriously wrong. That formation is one reason this disconnect bothers me so much.

If the public record shows a leader calmly talking about killing specific people or desecrating remains, and there is no sign of struggle or remorse, only denial when consequences come, it raises hard questions.

Not just about that person, but about what the rest of us are willing to tolerate under the name of faith.

HOW WE HELP KEEP THE WALLS STANDING

Here’s the part that’s uncomfortable for me to write.

Sara Duterte will answer for her words and actions. But the rest of us live in this same house. We have our own ways of separating belief from behavior.

When we see her at mass and feel reassured—“at least she fears God”—and never hold that alongside her threats, we cooperate with the split. When religious leaders stick to gentle statements and avoid naming what everyone already knows, they send a signal that this compartmentalization is acceptable.

We see versions of this in smaller scale.

The family member who prays nightly novenas but casually says certain groups “deserve” harm. The neighbor who serves in church but shares posts cheering on violent rhetoric. The local official who sponsors the fiesta mass while treating elections as a time for vote-buying and intimidation.

None of us invented this house. But many of us furnish it.

WHAT THIS REVEALS ABOUT US

It’s tempting to frame this as a simple story about one politician and her contradictions.

I don’t think that’s enough.

Sara Duterte’s case sits on top of a longer history of how we handle the clash between our religious identity and our political choices. We’ve grown used to leaders who talk about God in one breath and justify harm in the next. We’ve grown used to shrugging and saying, “ganun talaga ang politika.”

We tolerate it because it’s familiar. Because changing it would mean revisiting past choices—who we supported, what we defended, what we stayed silent about.

The same house keeps standing because we’ve adjusted ourselves to its layout.

THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS

I keep returning to that image of Sara Duterte in church, praying for her father’s freedom. On a human level, I understand that. Anak siya. Of course she wants him home.

But I can’t unhear the other things she has said. The story about paying someone to kill leaders if she dies first. The replayed thought of beheading. The threat about digging up a former president’s body and throwing it into the sea. Or the time she was throwing punches on a hapless sheriff in Davao who was just doing his job.

So I end up back at the same core question, sharper than before:

What does it mean to receive communion and also tell the public you’ve arranged for another person’s death? What does it mean for a church to keep welcoming leaders in religious spaces without ever naming these contradictions out loud? How long can we live this way before something breaks—not just in our institutions, but inside us?

I don’t have an easy answer.

Part of the tension for me is I also know the other side of this: the Church keeps its doors open. We don’t turn people away from mass. That’s part of the message of Jesus that formed me too. I’m not asking the Church to bar Sara Duterte from the pews. I’m asking what it means, inside my own conscience, to watch someone with that public record pray beside everyone else and not know what to do with it.

As a Catholic and an ex‑seminarian, I was taught to treat communion with real fear and reverence. If you’re conscious of grave sin, you go to confession first. You don’t line up casually. That formation is a big part of why this disconnect hits so hard for me.

I built Morning Coffee Thoughts so I could try to understand things like this, to think out loud and make sense of our politics and our faith. Most of the time, writing helps me see the pattern. With this one, I have to admit: I’m still stuck.

So I ask for advice from a priest. How do I hold this, as a Catholic Christian who is imperfect and sinful, but still trying to live by the commandments of God and the sacramental life of the Church?

Because whatever the answer is, it won’t just be about Sara Duterte. The house we live in is shared. Faith and politics were never really in separate buildings; they were always under one roof. And at some point, someone has to stop pretending the doors are sealed and start asking why we’re so afraid to let the rooms meet.

Sources:

1. GMA Network, Duterte supporters, critics stage rallies, 1 year after ICC arrest – https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/979638/duterte-supporters-critics-icc-anniversary/story/

2. ABS-CBN News, A year into Duterte arrest, Sara still insists father Rodrigo was “kidnapped” – https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/2026/3/11/a-year-into-duterte-arrest-sara-still-insists-father-rodrigo-was-kidnapped-1059

3. PhilStar, VP Sara to Catholics: Show mercy to people facing injustice – https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/12/09/2406096/vp-sara-catholics-show-mercy-people-facing-injustice

4. Inquirer, Have compassion, empathy, generosity like Virgin Mary – VP Duterte – https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2013354/vp-sara-calls-for-mercy-compassion-on-immaculate-conception

5. GMA Network, VP Sara underscores faith, humility in message for Feast of Jesus Nazareno – https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/972219/vp-sara-underscores-faith-humility-in-message-for-feast-of-the-jesus-nazareno

6. OVP, Feast of the Immaculate Conception | December 8, 2024 – https://www.ovp.gov.ph/post/feast-immaculate-conception-december-8-2024

7. Official and media posts on Sara Duterte’s feast day and religious messages – for example: Mindanao Times, Saints of Today, and related pages

8. Al Jazeera, Philippines VP Sara Duterte threatens Marcos assassination if she is killed – https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/23/philippines-vp-sara-duterte-threatens-marcos-assassination-if-she-is-killed

9. CBC News, Philippine vice-president publicly threatens to kill president, his family – https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/philippines-vice-president-threats-1.7391857

10. HDFF, Philippines’ Vice President Sara Duterte Sparks Controversy with Assassination Threats – https://hdff.org/philippines-vice-president-sara-duterte-sparks-controversy-with-assassination-threats/

11. The Whistler, Philippines VP Threatens To Kill President, Wife, Speaker – https://thewhistler.ng/philippines-vp-threatens-to-kill-president-wife-speaker

12. Philippine News Agency, NBI to summon VP Sara over “threat” to PBBM as gov’t mounts probe – https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1238638

13. Inquirer, “I did not make an assassination threat to the President” – Duterte – https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2032539/i-did-not-make-an-assassination-threat-to-the-president-vp-sara-duterte

14. Inquirer, Duterte: I’ll throw Marcos Sr.’s body into WPS if attacks continue – https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1994142/duterte-ill-throw-marcos-sr-s-body-into-west-ph-sea-if-attacks-continue

15. PhilStar, Sara Duterte recalls threat to toss Marcos Sr.’s remains into the sea – https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/10/18/2393515/sara-duterte-recalls-threat-toss-marcos-srs-remains-sea

16. Al Jazeera, Philippines’s Marcos vows to fight “troubling” threat of VP Sara Duterte – https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/25/philippiness-marcos-vows-to-fight-troubling-threat-of-vp-sara-duterte

17. New York Times, Why the Philippines’ Vice President Talked About Beheading Her Boss – https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/world/asia/duterte-marcos-philippines-feud.html

18. Religion Unplugged, Duterte’s moral crusade against drugs is targeting the Catholic Church – https://religionunplugged.com/news/2019/7/7/dutertes-moral-crusade-includes-attacking-the-catholic-church-to-stay-in-power

19. New Mandala, Duterte’s enduring popularity is not just a political choice—it is also religious – https://www.newmandala.org/dutertes-enduring-popularity-not-just-political-choice-also-religious/

20. Christianity and Duterte’s War on Drugs in the Philippines (journal article) – https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21567689.2019.1617135

21. Catholic Herald, Filipino Church leaders hail Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest for drug-war killings – https://www.catholicherald.com/article/filipino-church-leaders-hail-dutertes-arrest-for-extrajudicial-killings-in-his-drug-war

22. Humanists International, Philippines – Freedom of Thought Report – https://fot.humanists.international/countries/asia-south-eastern-asia/philippines/

23. Christian Century, The Philippines is 80% Catholic. President Duterte is ferociously anti-Catholic – https://www.christiancentury.org/article/global-church/philippines-80-catholic-president-duterte-ferociously-anti-catholic

24. Catholic.com, Must we confess before receiving Communion because God cannot be in the presence of sin? – https://www.catholic.com/qa/must-we-confess-before-receiving-communion-because-god-cannot-be-in-the-presence-of-sin

25. Catechism of the Catholic Church (on Eucharist and grave sin) – https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/catechism/index.cfm?recnum=4684

26. Adoremus, Confession 101: A Glimpse into How Seminarians Are Trained for the Sacrament of Penance – https://adoremus.org/2022/03/confession-101-a-glimpse-into-how-seminarians-are-trained-for-the-sacrament-of-penance/

27. The Eucharist and Priestly Formation – https://www.clerus.org/clerus/dati/2005-02/26-13/05EUING.html

28. PhilStar, Confess sins first, receive communion, penitents asked – https://www.philstar.com/news-commentary/2002/03/26/155182/confess-sins-first-receive-communion-penitents-asked

29. Pontificio Collegio Filippino, Guide to Confession – https://pcfroma.org/kb/guide-to-confession/