NV bishop nixes police security

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya — Bayombong Bishop Ramon Villena has declined an offer by the local police to provide him with security escorts in the wake of reported threats on his life allegedly from groups behind jueteng operations in Northern Luzon.

Senior Superintendent Jesus Manubay, provincial police director, said he offered Villena police security when he visited the bishop before he (Villena) left for Malaysia last week.

"We did not talk about the threats...I told him we are ready to provide him police security but he declined it," he said.

"No, not yet. I can manage," Manubay quoted Villena as saying.

Fr. Edmund Beronio, the bishop’s secretary, neither confirmed nor denied the reported threats against the bishop.

"The bishop has been under threat for so long. There’s nothing new with it. Threats come," he said.

Beronio said Villena, co-chairman of the Bishops-Businessmen Conference, left the country last Aug. 26 for a 10-day retreat for Catholic clergy in Malaysia.

From Malaysia, Beronio said the bishop will proceed to Thailand for another religious gathering, and is expected to be back on Sept. 9.

Villena, whose diocese covers Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino, has reportedly been receiving deaths threats supposedly from illegal gambling syndicates whose offers of money he had turned down.

In previous interviews, the bishop admitted to having turned down huge sums of money from the emissaries of alleged big-time jueteng financiers in Central Luzon and Northern Luzon.