CBCP: New Net venture to succeed

DAGUPAN CITY — Linga-yen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said yesterday he could no longer afford to fail and vowed that his new Internet venture will succeed.

Cruz, former president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), made the pledge after he admitted being gypped by a couple of P190 million in the now-bankrupt Internet venture CBCPNet.

The archbishop said he "learned (his) lesson the hard way" after couple Eman and Mardie Lim allegedly defrauded him and two other prelates in the operations of CBCPNet, a joint venture he incorporated with Bataan Bishop Honesto Ongtioco, CBCP media director Monsignor Pedro Quitorio III and the Lim’s company Twins Inc.

"We trusted too much and failed because we trusted the wrong persons. Now we learned that we should choose whom to trust," Cruz told The STAR.

Stressing that the CBCP was not involved in the scandal, he said he and the other incorporators of the failed CBCPNet only borrowed the CBCP name for its marquee value when the project was launched in 1999 to provide information technology services to Catholic dioceses.

However, the company, which had borrowed P190 million to finance its bandwidth lease and other capital equipment, went bankrupt after the Lims allegedly diverted CBCPNet’s funds to Twins Inc.

At Malacañang, President Arroyo reiterated yesterday she was not inclined to meddle or even comment on the substantial losses the three prelates had to sustain.

"That’s an internal matter of the Church. I have no comment on that," the President said during a radio interview in Cagayan de Oro City.

Cruz said he no longer wants to dwell on what happened because he needs to focus on how to make their new Internet venture, CBCP World, succeed.

Even as Cruz, Ongtioco and Quitorio are asking the authorities to close down CBCPNet, they incorporated CBCP World with Transpacific Broadcasting Group Inc. to fulfill what CBCPNet failed to deliver.

CBCP World, a network service provider, aims to fight the "works of Satan" on the Internet by providing schools and archdioceses in the country a filtering service that would weed out pornography, violence, gambling, satanism and other unwholesome websites.

It would also be tool for evangelization, the archbishop said, and would offer information on Catholic catechism and other issues on value formation.

CBCP World could also be a vehicle to educate people in remote and poor areas of the country, Cruz added.

The archbishop had said CBCP World would be "bigger" than CBCPNet and aims to reach 1,500 schools and 2,190 parishes nationwide. About a third of the 81 ecclesiastical territories in the country have expressed support for the project.

The new venture has also linked up with IBM for its hardware needs, Microsoft for its software requirements and Aguila Satellite for its very small aperture terminal (VSAT) facilities.

Meanwhile, STAR columnist Rev. James Reuter said yesterday the sex scandals that are rocking the Catholic Church in the Philippines and the US would drive away some of the faithful "for a limited time" but that this would be resolved by the exceptionally strong Filipino family.

Reuter, executive secretary of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Social Communication, said that while recent sex scandals, including pedophilia, in the church may scare away some youths, this situation would reverse in the future.

"I think we are seeing a tremendous period of transition when people are going both ways. They are concentrating on people who are sliding down. But I don’t think they’re moving away. I think they are moving towards God," Reuter said. — With Sandy Araneta