Prelate on Reyes’ suicide: unexpected

MANILA, Feb. 8, 2011—Former Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan Oscar Cruz said he did not expect Secretary Angelo Tomas Reyes committing suicide, even as he commends his soul to God.

“Frankly, [for] one thing, I did not expect this,” the 76-year old prelate said.

“My heart goes to him, he must have been suffering much from the past days because of what has been revealed nationwide,” the former CBCP president added.

The prelate, a known critic of past and present administrations, added he hopes Reyes’ heirs would “be able to return whatever funds, in cash or in kind, that do not belong to the family and it is called restitution.”

Asked of Catholic doctrines about suicides, Archbishop Cruz said there exists a presumption with the advancement in psychiatric sciences that when people commit suicide “they are not themselves.”

He said years ago, those who committed suicide were not given Catholic burials, no Masses celebrated for them.

“But now, the Church is more understanding because in this state of mind that is so confused and depressed then he is not himself,” he added. He further explained that though suicide is still censurable, it is less in gravity than conceived before.

“People who are no longer in the right senses because of very serious difficulties and big depression, etc. definitely will be very hard to say they were themselves when they took their life,” he said.

National media networks rushed to government-run Quirino Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City to follow-up reports that the former Armed Forces Chief of Staff and Defense Secretary Reyes shot himself in front of his mother’s grave at Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City.

Reyes has vehemently denied earlier exposes at the Senate of the Philippines and House of Representatives on separate occasions. (CBCPNews)