24/06/2026
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Mon Cualopingโs Compassion Is Pointed in the Wrong Direction
Mon Cualoping wants the public to focus on the survivors.
Fair enough.
But the problem is that he seems far more offended by the words of a grieving mother than by the fact that a mother is grieving in the first place.
His lengthy sermon about โjustice without crueltyโ sounds enlightened and compassionateโuntil one remembers who is being lectured.
Not the institution that failed.
Not the officials who may have questions to answer.
Not the circumstances that led to two young lives being lost.
A grieving mother.
Rovelyn Baterbonia had just lost her son forever.
Forever.
Yet Mon found it necessary to publicly remind everyone that the survivors should not be cursed, judged, or condemned.
The question is: who exactly is losing their humanity here?
The mother standing over her sonโs coffin, crying out for the truth?
Or the commentator who believes her grief should be filtered through the standards of public comfort?
Mon repeatedly invokes compassion, but his post exposes a stunning inability to understand grief.
Real grief is not neat.
Real grief is not measured.
Real grief is not approved by commentators before it is expressed.
When Rovelyn said, โHuwag mo silang patulugin, anak, kapag hindi sila nagsasabi ng totoo,โ she was not issuing a legal statement. She was not drafting a press release. She was speaking as a mother whose child was being lowered into the ground.
Only someone profoundly detached from that reality could interpret her pain as the central problem.
Mon speaks as though the nation is threatening the future of the survivors.
But Rene Baterbonia no longer has a future.
That is the reality that his post repeatedly dances around.
The survivors may still pursue their dreams.
Rene cannot.
The survivors may one day heal.
Reneโs family will carry this loss for the rest of their lives.
The survivors still have voices.
Rene has none.
That is why his motherโs voice matters.
And that is why attempts to moralize her grief are so deeply misplaced.
What makes Monโs post particularly tone-deaf is the false equivalence he creates between public scrutiny and a motherโs anguish.
A teenager is dead.
A family is shattered.
A mother is begging for the truth.
Yet somehow, Monโs greatest concern appears to be protecting people from the discomfort of hearing that motherโs pain.
That is not empathy.
That is privilege masquerading as compassion.
It is easy to preach restraint when it is not your child in the coffin.
It is easy to talk about discernment when you are not planning a funeral.
It is easy to speak about healing when you are not the one carrying the unbearable burden of burying your own son.
Mon says justice is not vengeance.
Nobody disagrees.
But grief is not vengeance either.
A motherโs heartbreak is not hatred.
A desperate demand for truth is not cruelty.
What is cruel is expecting a bereaved mother to make her grief more palatable for public consumption.
What is insensitive is asking a mother who has lost everything to worry about the feelings of everyone else.
And what is truly out of touch is believing that a Facebook lecture on compassion is what this moment needs from anyone.
The public does not need lessons on how to react to a grieving mother.
The public needs answers.
Rovelyn Baterbonia is not asking for revenge.
She is asking the same question every grieving parent would ask:
What really happened to my son?
Until that question is answered, no amount of commentary about โjustice without crueltyโ will sound compassionate.
It will sound exactly what it is:
A privileged lecture delivered from a safe distance to a mother standing at her sonโs grave.
