VATICAN NOTES: For Sunday reading, we culled these items from the Zenit news service —

* In remarks while receiving the new Ghana ambassador to the Holy See last Thursday, Benedict XVI said there is much to gain in “a democratic society that fosters freedom of religion and freedom of worship, and that appreciates the presence of religious institutions that strive to rise above political interests and are instead motivated by faith and moral values.” He added that a healthy cooperation between secular and religious interests benefits society. The Church, the Pope said, is “a willing partner with civil authorities wherever she is able to fulfill her mission untrammeled, in the light of Gospel values.”

* The national church in China was to ordain Father Joseph Shen Guo’an as bishop of the Wuhan diocese last Thursday — without Vatican approval — but the ordination was postponed. He was informed about the postponement but not given a reason for it. Neither was a new date given. China last ordained a bishop without papal approval in November.

* Africa will have a new nation next month when oil-rich Southern Sudan secedes from the north. The break has been anything but easy. There have been pockets of violence and no one is certain if Southern Sudan will manage to govern itself. The Christians and animist residents of the south said they were eager for a separation from the Muslim north.

* An Islamist political party in Pakistan has asked the country’s Supreme Court to investigate “blasphemous” and “pornographic” passages of the Bible. The Catholic bishop of Lahore has appealed to the faithful to resist the “provocation” and asked for prayer and patience. The Islamist party leader criticized passages that portrayed, he said, some prophets as sinners, guilty of “a variety of moral crimes.” He cited the story of King David’s adultery and facilitation of the killing of Bathsheba’s husband as an example.

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FORCING THRU: With the swift approval by both chambers of the Congress of the bill postponing the August election in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, one is wont to ask if solons vote guided by their personal interest or the wishes of their constituents.

Consultations in the ARMM had shown the overwhelming objection of the local folk to the postponement and the plan of President Noynoy Aquino to appoint officers-in-charge in place of the officials whose term expires in August.

Cabinet big guns from Manila who attended the consultation acted and talked like they were forcing on the crowd Malacañang’s thinking and agenda instead of gauging the sentiments of the ARMM population.

It appears at this point that only the Supreme Court’s slapping down the postponement as unconstitutional will abort the dark plan of the Liberal Party to install its own people in the area in preparation for the 2013 and 2016 elections.

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DUPLICITY: The reason given for the postponement is that the voters’ lists are not reliable and that ARMM leaders and residents, who must first undergo reform and enlightenment, cannot be trusted to exercise their right to vote and decide their own fate.

If such is the rationale of the postponement, then elections in all regions should be postponed indefinitely since 99.99 percent of voters’ lists are unreliable and all political units have shown signs of political immaturity and administrative lapses.

As Bongbong Marcos and Nene Pimentel have noted, there is duplicity when, after granting autonomy to the ARMM, imperial Manila comes back to say that the people there are not mature enough to elect their own officials and so Malacañang will just assign the officials of its choice.

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UNUSUAL CASE: In Lucena City, there is another unusual election situation. While the general idea is for people to choose their own officials through the ballot, it seems that the mayor there will be chosen ultimately by the Commission on Elections and the Supreme Court.

In the 2010 elections, the people elected Barbara Ruby C. Talaga as mayor after the Comelec gave due course to her substituting for her husband, the then mayor who had been disqualified from running again for having served the maximum three terms.

But after she was elected, proclaimed and had started to serve as mayor, Talaga’s victory was contested by Philip Castillo, who got the second biggest number of votes. He reasoned out that Talaga’s substitution was not valid because after her husband was disqualified she had nobody to replace.

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CONFUSED: While the protest was being kicked around in the division and the en banc of the Comelec, the elected vice mayor, Roderick Alcala (an LP and reportedly a nephew of Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala) entered the picture and announced neither Talaga nor Castillo should sit.

He said that since Talaga’s running should not have been allowed in the first place and since Castillo the protestant had lost, neither of the two could be validly installed as mayor. Ergo, he said, he the vice mayor (Alcala) should ascend to the mayorship.

As the division and the en banc in the Comelec debated the issues and with Alcala suddenly seeming to gain administration support for his claim on the mayorship, Talaga ran to the Supreme Court for relief.

After having approved her substituting for her husband-candidate before the deadline and having allowed her to run and then proclaimed her winner, the Comelec must be estopped from now saying it made a mistake and will disallow, although belatedly, Talaga’s candidacy and victory.

The Supreme Court will have the final say on this election matter that the people of Lucena had decided already in a regular and democratric process but which a confused and confusing Comelec had muddled after the fact.