Thousands of Filipinos to march through Manila over President Rodrigo Duterte’s repeated attacks on the Catholic Church

Catholics and Christians of other denominations are set to join the church-led interfaith protest in Manila’s commercial centre of Malate on Friday

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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Photo: EPA

Published: 9:00pm, 24 Jan 2019Updated: 8:01am, 25 Jan 2019

Thousands of Catholics and Christians of other denominations are preparing to attend a church-led interfaith protest in Manila’s commercial centre of Malate on Friday against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

Since coming to power in 2016, the populist leader has launched numerous attacks against the Roman Catholic Church and its representatives, who have been critical of his drugs war that has claimed at least 5,000 lives so far, according to official figures.

Roman Catholic devotees attend a mass in celebration of Easter in 2014. Photo: AFP

In June, he called God “stupid” in a televised address, prompting a swift backlash that saw his approval rating hit a record low, according to Manila-based pollster Social Weather Solutions. Yet the outrage did little to temper the firebrand leader’s rhetoric.

In November, he told a crowd at an event in Davao City, in his native Mindanao, “you don’t have to go to church to pay for these idiots”, referring to Catholic religious leaders. By December he was calling Catholic bishops “useless fools” and saying that people should “kill them”.

This hit a particularly raw nerve, as since the end of 2017, three Catholic priests have been killed in separate attacks across the Philippines.