With all of the opportunity for good Blood Ivory represents for people in Africa (and the Philippines), not to mention for elephants, it is disconcerting that the archbishop of Cebu believes that my exposing the ivory trade results from anti-church “bias.”
The Archbishop would appear to want things both ways: He wants to take credit for the Vatican’s finally investigating Monsignor Garcia on child sex abuse charges the Church has known about for a quarter century (hilighted in Blood Ivory), while assessing blame on Blood Ivory’s report about Catholics’ role in the global ivory trade. Both are facts worthy of positive leadership. The treatment of children has been such a hard-learned lesson for the Church I grew up in, can it be true the Church will miss the same lesson when it comes to animals and the people who protect them?