Real heroes

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2019 17:00:07 +0000

AS the SEA Games have shown, we have no lack of heroes and champions, many of them unsung and unheralded. When a policeman gave up his life by covering a live grenade with his body as it was lobbed by an amok, how many of us bothered to remember his name?

He was Police MSgt. Jason Magno, a name that Senator Sonny Angara wants to perpetuate in the national consciousness for a “heroic death (that) should serve as a reminder of the service provided by our brave men and women in the PNP.” MSgt. Magno was responding to a report about an amok who was threatening students of Initao College in Misamis Oriental with a knife and grenade. Before the man could be subdued, he had thrown the grenade, prompting the policeman to save the students without thinking of his own safety. Ten students and another policeman were wounded.

MSgt. Magno’s heroism is reminiscent of that of Brother Richie Fernando, a Jesuit scholastic who died saving students in a survivors’ center in Cambodia by doing the exact same thing: He tried to hold back the attacker but the grenade fell out of the man’s hand, bounced and landed behind Richie. Richie, 26 years old (in 1996), died shielding the attacker from the blast and saving the lives of several people in a classroom.

In the language of the Church, Richie died a martyr’s death, in which case proving he qualifies for sainthood ought to move the long and tedious campaign more speedily
http://tempo.com.ph/feed/