Honoring our martyred dead
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 17:54:55 +0000
THE whole city of Jolo is on a total lockdown following the twin explosions at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral on Sunday, January 27, that killed 20 civilians, soldiers and Coast Guard personnel, wounded 100 others, and shattered the peace promised to war-torn Southern Philippines by the January 21 ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law creating the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) .
The terrorist Islamic State (IS), which US President Donald Trump has declared “defeated” in Syria, prompting him to pull out all American troops fighting terrorism in that country, was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, but Philippine police and military authorities were equally quick to reject the claim as “pure propaganda.” The Duterte government had earlier claimed to have expelled IS forces when it liquidated the IS-linked Maute group last year in Marawi City.
A giant setback
Whoever was finally responsible for the carnage, foreign governments which were unanimous in welcoming the BOL as a genuine achievement for peace were equally unanimous in lamenting the return of violence as a giant setback to the peace and economic development in Mindanao. Local analysts cannot help linking the terrorist attack to the results of the January 21 plebiscite—of the five provinces in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Sulu alone voted against BARMM; Maguindanao, Lanao Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi voted for it, by a landslide.
But Sulu is Muslim, not Catholic; why should the Catholic Church be punished for Sulu’s negative vote? There was no pronounced Catholic campaign in any direction among the Tausugs; they voted as Tausugs, who apparently were not prepared to see their own Nur Misuari’s Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) lose out definitively to Murad Ebrahim’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Their vote against inclusion was motivated by ethnic political considerations, not by religious relief.
In Cotabato City, the crown jewel of BARMM, the people voted for inclusion, after voting against it twice in the past. This was largely because of the combined efforts of Muslim and Catholic campaigners, led by Cardinal Archbishop Emeritus Orlando Quevedo, who had long consistently advocated it. There was no basis for any group to accuse any religious group of having attempted to influence a negative vote on the organic law.
The Tausugs warned
But reports reaching some members of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) meeting in Manila, and with whom I had dinner on Sunday evening, said that on the eve of the January 21 plebiscite, the Tausugs were warned “by word of mouth” that bombs would explode if the BOL loses in Sulu. There was no indication though that the cathedral would be targeted.
Former Sulu governor Sakur Tan is still trying to get the Supreme Court to rule that because of its vote (163,526 against, and 137,630 in favor), Sulu cannot be made part of BARMM, despite the obviously unconstitutional rule that no single province in ARMM can opt for exclusion if the majority of provinces votes for inclusion. Tan is also challenging the constitutionality of the entire BOL itself, which provides for a regional government in which the executive and legislative functions are fused, as in a parliamentary government, while the rest of government remains presidential, where the executive and the legislative functions remain separate and distinct from each other.
Regardless of how the high court finally rules on these two issues, and how the law enforcement authorities finally resolve the authorship of the cathedral bombing, it looks like the Catholic Church in Sulu will be going through a new period of intense struggle. From 1971 to 2001, 13 Catholic priests were killed in Mindanao, a number of them from Sulu.
In 1985, a paramilitary group kidnapped and killed Father Tullio Favalli, the first foreign missionary taken from the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missionaries (PIME). His killers were arrested, prosecuted and punished, but ultimately forgiven. The chief culprit Norberto Manero was freed in January 2008, after serving a commuted sentence and being pardoned by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
First Favalli, then De Jesus
But after Father Favalli, the most celebrated of these murders was that of the 56-year-old Oblate bishop Benjamin de Jesus outside the cathedral of Mount Carmel on Feb. 4, 1997. De Jesus was a priest from Malabon, first assigned to Jolo’s Notre Dame College in 1976. He was made bishop by Saint John Paul 2nd in 1992. Two gunmen shot him six times at close range, hitting him on the head, the right cheek, shoulder and arm, back of the neck and twice in the chest. A 10-to-15-year-old third assailant was reported to have participated in the killing, and a fourth acted as lookout and getaway driver. One woman was killed and several others were wounded during the police pursuit of the killers through the marketplace.
De Jesus was the first Filipino Catholic bishop to be assassinated in history. In 1975, Manila’s auxiliary bishop Hernando Antiporda was killed in what was believed to be a robbery. In 1993, two Spanish Carmelite sisters were kidnapped in Sulu, but were subsequently released.
In 1994, Father Bertelsman of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate was kidnapped after substituting for Bishop de Jesus at a mass in a military camp. By some twist of fate, I was personally drawn to share the bishop’s tragedy.
A fateful trip to Jolo
On Feb. 14, 1997, my wife and I flew to Jolo in the company of some bishops and the Apostolic Nuncio to attend the martyred bishop’s funeral. We took the regular PAL flight to Zamboanga and from there took two small planes to Jolo. I was still in the Senate at the time, and an aide and a freelance photographer who used to cover Sen. Nikki Coseteng traveled with me.
On our return flight, some of the bishop’s relatives who had come with us chose to stay behind, leaving one small plane free. This allowed my faithful aide Edison Tamondong and the photographer Edwin Ponce de Leon to occupy the plane by themselves. As we prepared to take off, Auxiliary Bishop Antonio Nepomuceno of Cotabato came running, asking if he could join us. As we were already full, I asked him to join the next plane which was quite empty. Then we took off.
The plane crash
We landed in Zamboanga in a matter of minutes, and proceeded to the late Congresswoman Maria Clara Lobregat’s seafood restaurant on the seaside for lunch. Minutes went by, then hours, there was no news of the second plane. Then finally we heard the plane had crashed after takeoff in the forest, bringing all three passengers and the pilot to their death. There were conflicting stories and theories about what happened, but it remains unclear to this day what really happened. The owner of the plane was too poor to provide indemnity for the deceased passengers. Since then I have never been able to think of Bishop de Jesus’ death without feeling that part of me had also died with him. Nor have I been able to go back to Jolo.
More murders
This was not the last priestly murder in Sulu or in any other part of Mindanao. In 2002, Claretian priest Roel Gallardo was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Basilan. In January 2008, the Oblate priest Fr. Rey Roda was killed inside the Notre Dame High School in South Ubian town during a failed kidnapping attempt. The priest fought off Abu Sayyaf gunmen who raided his convent. He was praying when 10 gunmen burst into the room, dragged him outside and killed him. His hands were tied when his bullet-ridden body was found outside the convent later.
In other parts of the country, priests have been killed while speaking against the evil of extrajudicial drug killings. Since December 2017, three priests have been killed in Luzon for preaching about the sixth commandment, “Thou shall not kill” amid the continued extrajudicial killings of drug suspects. These are Fr. Richmond Nilo in Nueva Ecija, Fr. Mark Anthony Ventura in Cagayan and Fr, Marcelino Paez, also in Nueva Ecija.
All these deaths — whether in the hands of Islamic jihadists or death squads and vigilantes — have the quality of martyrdom, which in my view should be properly and adequately recognized by the Church. It may be time for some Catholic organization, after an inventory of all these victims, to work for the opening of the cause of beatification of these martyred dead. Then all the extremists and thugs who murder for the state will see how we honor the least of our brethren who are killed for their faith.
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