Cardinal gives Marcos last rites

CARDINAL Ricardo Vidal, one of the Philippines' two cardinals, has visited exPresident Ferdinand Marcos at the Honolulu hospital where he is being treated for heart and lung conditions.
During the visit the cardinal administered the last rites and gave communion to Marcos whom he described as "very, very sick." Cardinal Vidal denied there were any political implications to his actions, stressing that it was "purely religious and part of my priestly work."
Only his office and the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines had known about the proposed trip, Cardinal Vidal said. He justified such secrecy, saying he believed that had his visit become public knowledge it might have been halted by political intervention.
Cardinal Vidal was president of the Philippines' bishops' conference when it declared in 1986 that Marcos had no moral basis to rule.
Asked to comment on the implications of the cardinal's trip to Honolulu, Archbishop Leonardo Legaspi, current bishops' conference president, replied: "All I can say is that the bishops knew of his trip and that he went on his own and not on behalf of the conference."