Nun unfazed of red-tagging by gov’t official

An 80-year-old Benedictine nun remained unfazed after she was tagged by a government official as a “long-time ally” of a “communist terrorist organization”.

Sr. Mary John Mananzan, a known political and feminist activist, said she is undaunted by the accusation, which she described as “libelous”.

“Actually I know that no venomous lies uttered by anyone can change or make a dent on the real person that I am,” she said.

Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy of the Presidential Communications Operations Office has earlier accused Mananzan as a supporter of communist rebels.

Badoy’s reaction was in response to the nun’s Facebook post on the guilty verdict against Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa over a cyber libel case.

The PCCO official is also the spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

The activist group Movement Against Tyranny (MAT) has demanded an apology from Badoy for putting the nun’s “life and liberty in peril”.

“We demand a public apology from Badoy retracting and correcting her condemnable Facebook post,” the MAT said in a statement on June 19.