Duterte
© AFPPhilippine President Rodrigo Duterte
The Catholic Church must embrace homosexual kinship among the clergy, Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte has said in his latest attack on the Vatican... just after calling on the population to rob and even kill "useless" bishops.

Duterte, who has in the past openly revealed that he was sexually molested by a priest, once again criticized the Catholic Church on Thursday, this time for allegedly suppressing the widespread homosexual tendencies of its clergymen - and dared the "sons of b****es" in the Vatican to abolish celibacy. "Most of them are gay... They should come out in the open, cancel celibacy and allow them to have boyfriends."

The Holy See had functioned just fine for over one thousand years before the Church adopted a policy of clerical celibacy at the Second Lateran Council in 1139. Duterte is an open supporter of same-sex unions who has even acknowledged fiddling with the notion of becoming a bisexual. He has repeatedly called on the Church to abolish the centuries-old canon law, suggesting that it only fuels homosexual tendencies among clergymen. Last month, Duterte boldly estimated that "almost 90 percent" of Catholic priests were homosexuals.

Duterte's vocal tics against the Catholic Church have become somewhat a signature of his presidency. Just before his speech this week, the president called on the faithful to steal from and, if the need arises, to even kill the bishops.

"Hey you bystanders, when the bishop passes by, stage a holdup because he has lots of money, that son of a b****,"Duterte said on Wednesday.

"Kill all those bishops there. They are useless," the president added, recalling how a priest had once called him a demon during a sermon and had wished for his death.

Duterte has been at odds with the country's Catholic Church even since before he took office in 2016. Church leaders have repeatedly condemned his vulgar rhetoric and his fierce crackdown on his country's drug culture, which has left thousands of people dead in alleged extrajudicial killings.