‘You don't have to go to the church to pay for these idiots', said Rodrigo Duterte, criticizing practices in the Catholic Church in the Philippines.
‘When someone is baptized, you have to pay…when someone dies, you have to pay. You build a chapel in your own house and pray there', the Philippine president said.
Giving a speech at a ceremony marking the construction of the Davao City Bulk Water Project in Davao City, Duterte, a former mayor of the city, once again harshly criticized the Catholic Church, describing its beliefs as ‘archaic' and that they couldn't be applied in the modern world.
The Catholic Church, he said, is ‘clinging on to a belief which was 3,000 years ago'.
‘What do they know about the world today? And then you're going to make people follow your teachings', he said in Davao City.
READ MORE: Show Me a Selfie! Philippines' Duterte Vows to Resign if God's Existence Proven
The Philippine president also accused Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of using drugs.
These accusations were rejected by the bishop on his Facebook page, where he recommended Duterte, whom he earlier called ‘sick' to ‘take vitamins with fruit shake blended with malunggay'.
Earlier, Duterte accused the same man — ‘Bishop David'- of stealing Church donations and using them for his own purposes.
In recent months Duterte has been called Catholic bishops ‘drunkards', characterizing the Church as a ‘hypocritical institution' and intending to ‘kick a**es' of its ‘priests'.
At one point the president of the Philippines even called God ‘stupid', while questioning the logic of the creation story.
‘Who is this stupid God? You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work. Eve ate it and then woke Adam up and asked him to eat it as well. Adam ate it and then malice was born. Now all of us are born with an original sin. What is the original sin? Was it the first kiss? What was the sin? Why is it original? You're still in your mother's womb and yet to already have a sin. I cannot accept that. Very stupid proposition', he said in a speech during the opening ceremony of the National ICT Summit in June this year.
READ MORE: Philippine’s Duterte Says Catholic God is ‘Stupid,’ 76 Million Faithful Disagree
Later, Duterte apologized for that particular remark, saying in a video posted on the Presidential Communication Facebook page that he apologised exclusively to God for what he had said.
