As I noted in my recent entry on the murder of Father Fausto Tentorio, there have been two other killings of priests belonging to Father Tentorio's order, PIME. As if those losses haven't been enough, PIME has also had two kidnappings as well. I thought it prudent to discuss those incidents in addition to Father Tentorio's recent murder, BUT, in not wanting to steer the focus away from Father Tentorio I had promised that I would discuss the four previous cases in another post, a companion piece to Father Tentorio's entry, and so I will begin to do so in this first post in a three part series.
PIME, or Pontificium Institum Missionum Exterarum (Latin for "The Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions") is an order based in Rome and dedicated to missionising amongst non-Catholics and for the most part they centre their efforts in far flung corners of the globe. The order resulted from the merging of two Italian seminarys:
1) The Lombard Seminary for Foreign Missions, in Milan, founded in 1850
2) The Pontifical Seminary of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul for Foreign Missions, in Rome, founded in 1871
The two seminarys were joined in 1926 and given the present name. Interestingly, the older of the two institutions, Lombard Seminary, deployed its first three missionary priests to two tiny islands in Oceania, Woodlark and Rook. Marist priests had preceded them there but had abandoned their mission due to the danger posed by the islands' then cannibalistic tribes. When Lombard Seminary deployed three priests there, two of them were served as lunch- literaly- for the islanders (one was beatified), and so the third swam for his life after which the mission was abandoned. One can see that from its earliest beginnings PIME missionary priests dove headfirst into dangerous locales and often didn't live to tell about it.
With the coming of Vatican II- which began in 1962 and ended in 1965- the Catholic Church was turned inside out. All of a sudden, Latin, the Church's liturgical tongue since its founding nearly two millenia before fell by the wayside. Whereas before, if lucky, parishoners in very large cities were serenaded by ethereal Gregorian Chants that nobody could understand, now priests were allowed to sing folktunes or even modern pop music, and even the most isolated village now haf a choir singing in its everyday language. The hellfire and brimstone pathos gave way to eucemenical luncheons and touchy feely- interfaith encounters and retreats. With this new, more liberal outlook, the Catholic Church began attracting a different class of priests, clergymen with a social consciousness. PIME had always taken a much more gentler path with potential converts. Where as Catholic priests entering heretofore uncontacted villages would first build a church, PIME felt that schools should come first along with concrete improvements in villager's everyday lives. Otherwise, one might attract converts but the conversions are almost always insincere and with little impetus would backslide and throw off their newly accepted faith.
As Vatican II began in Rome in 1962, the Church was undergoing a parallel catharsis in Latin America.
Theologians like the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, and his contemporaries Juan Luis Segundo, Lucio Gerd, and many others had assimilated the thought provoking ideas that came out of Central Europe in the post-World War II Era. Men like Jacques Maritain, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar saw a Church that catered to the well to do but generally ignored the needy except when asking them to tithe, or else castigating them for "slovenly" habits. By 1964, at a conference in Brasil's Pertropolis, in Rio de Janeiro, Gustavo Gutierrez described his take on theology boldly as, "A critical reflection on praxis." Essentialy he was paraphrasing Karl Marx, albeit it very loosely. Marx had said, "Philosophers have explained the world; our task is to change it." Gutierrez was saying that theology wasn't a sterile ideology, it wasn't a theoretical construct. Rather, it was alive and vibrant. It was meant to be applied in everday life to correct institutional and systematic injustices that made the rich richer and kept the poor just as poor. Theologians should be active partners with the poor and disenfranchised in a struggle to transform the world for the betterment of all.
By 1968, three years after Vatican II ended, another, even bigger conference was held in Medellin, Colombia and months later, in 1969 the new theological variant had come into its own with a conference held in Cartigny, in Switzerland, that was entitled, "Toward a Theology of Liberation." As 1970 began a parallel movement within various Protestant Churches was developing along a very similar line with a convention held in Buenos Aries, Argentina. Christianity as a whole seemed to be moving in a general direction.
Although PIME pre-dated Vatican II by more than a century, the momentous changes within Christendom boosted the tiny order's cachet. The organisation began attracting many experienced clerics as well as the usual cannon fodder, freshly minted priests, just out of the PIME seminary. One of the more "experienced" priests was Father Tullio.
A native of Sacchetta di Sustinente, in Mantova, Italy in 1946, in an Italy wracked by the violence of the American Occupation at the close of World War II. Unable to properly support their son, Tullio's parents had him enter a seminary at age 9, in 1956. At age 15, in 1962, Tullio began studying fulltime for the priesthood and by 1965 had become a priest. Gaining his Ordination just as Vatican II finished, Father Tullio entered the priesthood and began his duties as an assistant parish priest in a non-descript farming village in his native Italy.
By the end of the 1960s Italy was suffering from political upheaval that effected every corner of society. Kidnapping was rampant and various armed groups capitalised on the anarchy. Groups like Brigate Rossi (Red Brigade), Lotta Continua (Contuious Struggle), Poetre Operaio Pisano, Poetre Operlo, and so on, made life in Northern Italy incredibly difficult but more than the threat to life and limb. Feeling unable to fufill the mandate of his new vocation he left the priesthood and spent the next several years on a journey of self discovery.
In 1978 he felt mature enough to consider re-committing his life to the priesthood, and so he spent a trial period in a PIME Formation House in the Italian town of Busto Arsizio. After long contemplation Tullio realised that he hadn't spent his formative years in the seminary and while he did pass his courses and gain ordination, he felt that the experience had been hollow. He resolved to re-enter the seminary, a PIME seminary, and re-learn all that he needed to in order to effectively minister to the poorest of the poor in isolated villages as opposed to overweight matrons in suburban Milan. On June 6th, 1981 Father Tullio Favali gained his second ordaination and became a PIME missioary priest.
Assigned to the town of Monza as an assistant parish priest in Christ the King parish. Though just getting his feet wet as a PIME cleric Tullio felt impatient and wanted to go abroad as soon as possible. The 35 year old priest badly wanted to be sent to Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately for Father Tullio however, Papua was then, as now, in conflict as the Papuans struggled for independence against Indonesia which had invaded it in 1969 and, eventually re-named it "Irin Jaya." More to the point, Indonesia, as a Muslim Nation, doesn't cotton to Christian missionaries, even when the target demographic is Animist. Instead his superiors deployed him to Chicago, in the United States. There Father Tullio attended a language school in order to learn English, seeing as how English is now seen as the lingua franca the world over.
Still unable to proceed to Papua Father Tullio was deployed back to Italy to teach at PIME's college and seminary in Sotto Il Monte where he remained until his first mission posting. Instead of Papua, New Guinea Father Tullio Favali was sent to Mindanao. On June 12th, 1984 Tullio arrived at PIME's Regional House in Zamboanga City. After a spell at a language school in Davao City Tullio was assigned to Kidapawan Prelature, where he in turn deployed to the municipality of Tulunan, in North Cotabato Province. At Tulunan Tullio became the assistant to its parish priest, another Italian PIME misionary, Father Peter Geremia.
Geremia was himself already quite notorius both within the Church and in Mindanao at large. Arriving in the Philippines just as Marcos declared Martial Law in the Autumn of 1972 he soon ran afoul of the authorities and found himself rounded up in a PC, or Philippine Constabulary camp. That incident typified Geremia's brand of "in your face - I don't care what you, yours, and all of you think" brand of advocacy. Though both Geremia and Father Tullio Favali were PIME missionary priests, and both were born and bred in Northern Italy, they never grew particularly close. Years later Father Geremia would publish his diary, "Dreams and Bloodstains: The Diary of a Missioner in the Philippines." In it he wrotes on April 12th, 1985, one day after Tullio was murdered,
"I saw Tullio on the road with his brains scattered around, his mouth eating dirt, his blood like a dark carpet...Tullio came into my life like a stranger. I did not know him before. We lived together but in separate worlds. I could never share with him my inner struggles and he was taken by his (own) struggle. We were running with all our strength, without looking much at the obstacles or each other."
The violence that served as the impetus behind Geremia's diary entry stemmed from three brothers from South Cotabato Province, the Maneros, and revolved around what was technically a unit of the CHDF, or Civilian Home Defense Force. Founded in 1976, it was meant as a way in which to consolidate what was then many dozens of disparate pro-Government paramilitaries, many of which had been fighting on Mindanao since 1969 when the early Islamic paramilitaries like the Itumans (Black Shirts) and Barakudas (Baraccudas) first began committing atrocities against non-Muslims in Central and Northwestern Mindanao. Some, like the Maneros' outfit, were operating as brigands, cattle rustleing, murder for hire, extortion, and all sorts of fun family type activities.
In the Maneros' case, the brothers had gotten their start as small time thugs in their hometown of Pomolok in what is today South Cotabato Province. Protected by their father, Norberto Sr., a barangay captain, the brothers built a stronghold in a compound at the foot of Mount Matatum, in Pomolok's Barangay Kinilis where they were well paid as they handled the bloody eviction of B'laan Tribesmen who stood in the way of Dole Phil., and its plans to turn the barangay into a giant pineapple plantation in 1971, having gained notiriety by the late-1960s.
One of the brothers, Norberto Manero Jr., took a bad break when the Mayor of Magsaysay, a municipality in Davao del Sur Province, had him arrested by PC. Captain Filipino "Fil" O.Amoguis who hunted Manero's group throughout the mountain range stretching from what is today Sarangani Province across to the outskirts of Davao City. Eventually cornered and sentenced to death, Manero was given a date of execution and it seemed that all hope had been lost. On the big day Manero was brought out to the PC shooting range for an execution by firing squad. As he stood next to the pole that he would be bound to before being shot, a guard began fiddling with his keys trying to find the handcuff key when the detachment commander received an unexpected radio transmission from District Headquarters in Davao City. The commander was ordered not only to halt the execution but to not return Manero to jail, he was pardoned. In the end Manero's life had been saved because his guard misplaced a key.
Later Manero would learn that he owed his life to attorney Cornelio Falgui, a once and future mayor in the municipality of Kiamba, in what is today Sarangani Province. Falgui, like other ambitious Ilonggo politicians had relied on Manero's group to settle political vendettas as well as to help consolidate land purchases in the upland environs of Kiamba and other nearby towns. Falgui realised that should he succeed in saving Manero's life the charasmatic and extremely violent Manero would be indebted to him ever after. Indeed, all these years later, long after Mayor Falgui's death, Manero continues to hold a close relationship with Falgui's son, General Santos City-based attorney Tomas C.Falgui.
The elder Falgui, Cornelio, after learning of the hastily set execution, began calling in chips and finally succeeded in gaining the assistance of the local infantry battalion commander. After discussing the matter with his superior at brigade headquarters the two officers quickly contacted Major General Fortunato "Tony" U.Abat, then serving as the commander of the now defunct CEMCOM, or Mindanao Central Command. The two lower ranked officers informed Abat that Manero was a Military Assett who had become ensnared in a political vendetta while undertaking a covert operation at the behest of the battalion and brigade commanders. In the end Fortunato agreed to intervene and after a subordinate failed in getting the execution scubbed grabbed the phone himself and angrily, neigh enraged, phoned the Philippine Constabulary and saved Manero's life...and in doing so allowed Manero and his merry band of degenerate miscreants to once again run through the mountains on Mindanao's southern coast. This time however, Manero did so as an official paramilitary leader holding mission orders personally signed by then Minister of National Defense, Juan Ponce Enrile. Manero had come within a milimeter of losing his life but had emerged not only a free man, but with a cloak of invincibility courtesy of the Marcos Dictatorship.
Having assumed the nom de guerre, "Kumander Bucay," Manero's merry men (and women, his first wife, Leonarda Lacson Manero, having assumed her own title, "Kumander Inday") the group was intact . In 1976 Manero's paramilitary was grandfathered into the Integrated Civilian Home Defense Force, or ICHDF (which would later be shortened simply to CHDF). The ICHDF was a way in which to better control disparate right wing paramilitaries as well as a way in which to implement an effective force multiplier vis a vis the counterinsurgency programme, needing fresh meat to do battle with the MNLF and ever increasingly, with the NPA as well. Just a year later, in 1977, Manero's ICHDF was linked to a troubling incident in his hometown, Pomolok. Two brothers, Ali and Mamabawatan Mamalumpong, were abducted and horribly tortured before being killed.
Owing to Manero's powerful patrons in both the PC as well as the Central and Southern Mindanowan business and political arenas no body was charged in the case and Manero's reputation was now assured. Like Ghengis Khan, all most villages had to hear was that Manero's company would be undertaking an operation, or simply implementing a security protocol on behalf of the PC and that village would empty within hours, a stampede of refugees abandoning hearth and home.
By the beginning of the 1980s the biggest internal security threat on Mindanao, and indeed nationwide, had become the Maoist NPA. At nearly five times their current armed strength it is difficult to convey just how powerful this group was. This of course was well before even the first internal purge. The NPA was viewed as the champion of the downtrodden and oppressed and Marcos was almost universally reviled. On Mindanao the strongest sector for the NPA was the now defunct CMR, or Central Mindanao Region. With CMR's power steadily growing the PC shifted assets and began consolidation of its own forces, including the CHDF. Unlike the CAA programme (Civilian Active Auxiliary, of which CAFGU is the best known) the CHDF wasn't locked into a highly specific geographical area. Its companies could be deployed and operate anywhere it was needed.
By the Spring of 1985, Manero's company was deployed to the municipality of Tulunan in North Cotabato Province to ferret out a large NPA presence that had just begun exerting itself. The NPA first arrived on Mindanao just as Martial Law was being implemented in September of 1972. Centered in Davao City it would take five years before anyone in Government even realised that the Maoists had migrated south. Despite repeated attempts it would be 1980 before the NPA fully established itself outside of the immediate Davao Region. One of the first outward thrusts ended up on the nexus of Davao de Sur, North Contabato and Bukidnon Provinces in 1977. However, it wasn't until 1979 that parts of Central Mindanao first fell under control of the NPA.
Tulunan, a town in North Cotabato's Second Congressional District, aka the Ilonggo Belt, had remanied free from much of the strife seen in areas that had developed a strong NPA presence. That was, until Father Peter Geremia brought his personal brand of Catholicism to the towns outlying barangays. His incessant organising of peasants (when Lumads weren't available) into "progressive" organisations naturally earned him a high ranking slot on the Military's Order of Battle. Orders of Battle, or OBs, are a listing of individuals and organisations that prioritises their neutralisation. In other words, it serves as a list of targets ALTHOUGH the neutralisation need not be of a violent nature. Unfortunately for Father Tullio Favali he ended up living with and working side by side with Father Germia, and this would end up costing him his life.
The day before Father Geremia's aforementioned diary entry, on April 11th, 1985, Norberto and his two brothers, Elpidio and Edilberto, or "Edil," sat just outside a non-descript "carinderia" (eatery) at an unnamed crossroads at mile marker Kilometer 125 in Tulunan's Barangay La Esperanza. The brothers were meeting there with Arsenio Villamor Jr., the right hand man of Tulunan's Mayor, Josue Faustino, and himself the scion of a local politician. Villamor had been appointed the unofficial co-ordinator of local counterinsurgency efforts and it had been he who had invited the Manero CHDF to Tulunan to try and rid the outlying barangays of the NPA and its most ardent supporters. With Villamor were two bodyguards supplied by the 3rd Special Forces Battalion (Airborne), and with the three Manero brothers were Roger Bedano, Efren Plenayo, Rodrigo "Rudy" Espija, and the two Lineses brothers, Rudy and Severino, all members of the Manero-led CHDF detachment.
Brainstorming, a relative term in this case, the group decided that a prudent first course of action would be to affix placards at the crossroads upon which would be listed the names of known sympathisers in the immediate area. Meant to intimidate, one of the first names listed was Father Peter Geremia. They then got down to business since known killers like the Maneros and their outfit weren't brought into towns to hang posters. Although ostensibly Government employees as members of the CHDF, those that requested the group's help knew that it would come at a steep price...although it is fair to say that Arsenio Villamor Jr. never guessed how steep that price could be.
The group began discussing who should die and amongst those names, who should take the highest priority. Together they formulated a list:
1) Father Peter (Fr.Peter Geremia)
2) Domingo Gomez, a lay worker close to Fr.Peter
3) Fred Gapete, a local peasant organiser
4) Rufino "Bantil" Robles, a lay worker close to Fr.Peter
5) Rene Tabagac
6) a man known only by his surname, Villaning
Edilberto Manero suggested that if Father Peter proved difficult they might as well simply target the other PIME priest, Father Tullio Favali. Nobody responded but those words would ring heavy as those present recalled that meeting. At that point Villamor took his leave, having other pressing duties to attend to and left the Manero CHDF at the cafe, knowing that the number one target, Father Peter, was up country making the rounds of his followers in outlying barangays. When he returned to his rectory, 5 kilometers past that crossroads on the way into Tulunan proper, Villamor wanted to be far, faw away and preferably in a large crowd to serve as his alibi.
With time to kill the Maneros and their men drank away the morning at a cockpit on the opposite side of the road, betting on which rooster would kill the other. By 1PM Elpidio was bored and so he took two of their men and began nailing a placard with those six names to a telephone pole before ducking back into the cafe for some more beer. Now feeling no pain the group decided instead of simply waiting around for Father Peter they would simply go after another name on the list. As luck would have it, Rufino "Bantil" Robles lived within sight of the crossroads. Unfortunately, that happened to be the moment that Bantil chose to approach the men in front of the cafe and ask why his name was affixed to a placard since, in the drunken state of mind, the Maneros had neglected to affix any heading to the placard. Instead it merely consisted of six names, with no explanation. Edilberto asked the man if he had any problem having his name on the list. Confused, Bantil replied that he couldn't have a problem if he didn't know what the list signified and repeated his initial question, asking why it had been added to a list. Edilberto suddenly pulled a 38 caliber revolver and fired one round that just missed hiting Bantil square in the head but still managing to crease the right side of his head.
Dripping blood Bantil threw himself at Edilberto and began trying to wrestle the revolver away from him. Terrified, Bantil's wife then joined the fracas trying to separate the two men and screamed at her husband to run. Heeding his wife's advice Bantil ran for his life as Edilberto gave chase. Firing one last time as Bantil approached the door to the home of yet another of the targeted men, Domingo Gomez. Elpidio's second round just missed Bantil's leg, taking a bit of fabric as it went through his trousers. Bantil didn't want his luck to run out and so, after Gomez's wife opened the door he pushed his way inside the house and barricaded it to keep gis attacker from entering.
Bantil's wife had already begun the five kilometer walk to Father Peter's rectory and hadn't gone very far before a passing motorcyclist saved her from walking the entire way. With Father Peter still in the upland barangays only Father Tullio was there to receive her. As soon as he understood what she was saying he jogged to his motorcycle and told the woman to climb onto the back. Arriving at the Gomez home he saw that the attackers had surrounded it but knowing that he couldn't back down he slowly drove up to the house, parked his motorcycle and then entered to check on Bantil.
Edilberto meanwhile, had gone back to the cafe to enjoy a few more beers. As the cafe's owner, Reynaldo Deocades, nervously brought Edilberto his request Edilberto suddenly jumped up and pistol whipped the man in the face, laughingly calling him a "fuc*ing Communist." Deocades returned to the counter and set about slopping the two hogs he kept in a pen at the rear of his establishment. Edilberto decided that Deocades hadn't been sufficiently terrorised yet. Pocketing his 38 caliber revolver he picked up his M14, went to the pigsty and sprayed the ground around Deocade's feet with several rounds causing the latter to collapse in tears, apparently close to a nervous breakdown. Two men with Edilberto, brothers Rudy and Severino Lineses joined their drunken companion howling with laughter. Finished now that Deocades was crying, with head between his knees, they walked over to the Gomez home where Father Tullio has just joined Mrs.Gomez and Bantil. As they approached Norberto walked over to the priest's motorcycle and wheeled it out into the centre of the road. Loosening the gas cap Norberto purposefully emptied some of the fuel and then used it to set the motorcycle on fire.
Hearing the crowd scream Father Tullio nervously peered out a window and saw his motorcycle on fire. Exiting the house slowly, his arms raised upwards as if in surrender, he asked Norberto why he had set his motorcycle on fire, the last words Tullio Favali would ever say. As Tullio asked Norberto why he had set the motorcycle on fire Norberto stepped backwards, both thumbs pointing downward on outstretched hands, before finally saying, "Ano ang gusto month Padre? Gusto month Father bukon ko ang ulo mo?" (What do you want Father? Father you want me to crack your skull?). Edilberto stepped forward from the side, and then, without warning shot Father Tullio in the head from point blank range. The shot, from Edilberto's 38 caliber revolver, caused Tullio to spin 180 degrees and sink to his knees, as he did so hid arms reflexively crossed and as he fell onto his back his arms remained in that eerie position.
Thus concludes the first part of this three part entry.
Showing posts with label PIME. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PIME. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The Killing of Father Fausto Tentorio in North Cotabato Province, Business as Usual
Just yesterday I posted about the villagers in Valencia City's Barangay Guinoyuran marking the 20th Anniversary of Father Nerilito "Neri" Satur's brutal murder. Father Neri, the Assistant Parish Priest for Guinoyuran who had been concurrently serving his adopted community as a "Forest Guard," Filipino-speak for "forest ranger," died on October 14th, 1991. Neri had been appointed as one of five Catholic clergymen from the Diocese of Bukidnon, by its then-Bishop Gaudencio Rosales, to serve as Forest Guards. Bishop Rosales had done so in order to enforce Bukidnon Province's moratorium on logging, implemented by the DENR (Department of Energy and Natural Resources) in late-1986.
Opposing Father Neri's environmental partisanship were a group of Higaon-on Tribal CAAs, or Civilian Armed Auxiliaries, more commonly called "CAFGUS" in reference to the most common of the CAA entities, the Civilian Auxiliary Force Geographical Unit, though at the time it signified Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit. This detachment, the Guinoyuran Post, had gravitated towards organised criminal activity. Even today, 20 years later, that part of the island is still very remote and so the CAAs made money in the tablon-tablon, or illegal logging trade that fed three full time saw mills in just Valencia alone (which hadn't been made a city at that point in time.
By October of 1991 Father Neri had confiscated nearly 7,000 board feet of prime timber, an astounding amount and all the more so when one realises that the then-30 year old priest had but 11 months guarding the jungle around his adopted village. On the day in question, October 14th, 1991, Neri left the rectory where he lived in Valencia proper and picked up his friend and assistant, 20 year old Jacqueline for the long ride over the 18 kilometer dirt track leading uphill to Barangay Guinoyuran. The barangay was holding its patron saint fiesta at which Father Neri was scheduled to perfom a Mass. Finishing by the early afternoon Jacquelin and Neri gathered their few belongings and began their long ride down hill into the centre of Valencia. The sordid tale is told in its entierty in the post entitled, "Remembering Father Nerilito "Neri" Dazo Satur."
Ironically, while lamenting a time and place which relegates people who devote their lives towards helping others (or so the story goes) as mere game or a hunted quarry, I learned that yet another Catholic priest had lost his life to Mindanao's almost senseless violence just that very morning. Father Fausto Tentorio, known to his parishoners as "Tatay Pops" (Father Pops), an Italian priest who has lived and worked on Mindanao for well over three decades was shot to death as he was about to leave his parish on the Bukidnon, Davao del Sur, and North Cotabato Provincial borders for the long hard ride to North Cotabato's capital, Kidapawan City for the Diocesan Monthly Presbyterium at the Bishop's Residence.
A member of PIME, or the Pontificium Institutum Missionum Exterarum (Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions from the original Latin), a Vatican-based Order devoted to missionary work, he arrived at PIME's Regional Headquarters in Mindanao's Zamboanga City fresh from Rome in 1978, just a year after his ordination. First assigned to Zamboanga City's Barangay Ayala in that same province of Zamboanga del Norte as an Assistant Parish Priest Father Fausto immersed himself in the local culture. Two years later, in 1980, as the Archdiocese of Zamboanga began preperations to launch the Prelature of Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay Province, where most PIME priests were then serving in the municipality of Aurora, the Archbishop of Zamboanga felt that PIME had fufilled much of its mandate in developing new and/or struggling parishes and converting whatever Lumad (Animist Hilltribesmen) hadn't already been strong armed and shoved into the faith of "love and compassion." Needing new Lumads to ruin, Zamboanga's Bishop took the bulk of PIME's recruits, pointed them towards Kidapawan (not yet a city) in North Cotabato Province and screamed, "Go! ...Besides, the Bishop of the then-Prelature of Kidapawan was to become the Bishop in Ipil. As a Jesuit he naturally wanted to associate with Jesuits and so the Archbishop of Zamboanga obliged him by shuffling the deck. PIME, as foreigners with a negligible presence were organisationally expendable. PIME (most) moved to Kidapawan while Jesuits in Kidapawan moved to Zamboanga Sibugay Province (if Catholics cannot even get along amongst themselves how can they try to preach to the rest of us? Just a thought).
Father Fausto, with most other PIME missionary priests transferred to the Archdiocese of Cotabato and its Prelature of Kidapawan with its headquarters in the town of the same name. The Archbishop assigned Fausto to the municipality of Columbio in the neighbouring province of Sultan Kudarat where he was soon made its Mission Director. In 1985 Father Fausto was again transferred, this time to the municipality of Arakan in the province of North Cotabato, where he stayed until his death. Arakan sits in a deep valley in the foothills rising out of Maguindanao Province and leading into the bordering the aforementioned provinces of Bukidnon and Davao del Sur.
It was that same year, 1985, that another PIME missionary priest assigned to North Cotabato Province became a bizarre footnote in Philippine History. Father Tullio Favali was an Assistant Parish Priest in the municipality of Tulunan where he served beside yet another PIME missionary, the infamous Father Peter "Pads" Geremia. For the sake of brevity I will try to keep this short and sweet by only offering the scantest of outlines, though I am also composing a companion entry on the murders and kidnappings of other PIME missionary priests that have taken place on Mindanao; when people discuss Father Tullio they always talk about his having been killed by Ilaga paramilitary leader Norberto Manero Jr. The story goes that Manero killed Father Tullio and then, in line with his cultic religious beliefs he and his group ate Father Tullio's brain. The story has become iconic of the anarchy always associated with our fair isle, Mindanao. The problem though is that none of it is true. Norberto Manero Jr. did NOT kill Father Tullio. Norberto Manero Jr. did NOT cannabalise Father Tullio, let alone eat his brain. Again, that will be discussed in the companion entry I will post just after this one goes up. Likewise, the KFR, or Kidnapping for Ransom of PIME Fathers Giancarlo Bossi and Giuseppe Bendetti and the murder of Father Salvador Carzedda will also be discussed at length in that same entry.
Father Fausto himself had been no stranger to the wanton violence and two faced gross assaults that characterise life on Mindanao. On October 6th, 2003 Fausto and four lay assistants drove by motorcycle to the municipality of Kitaotao in Bukidnon Province to speak to a Barangay Captain about Fausto's then-nascent organisation, TIKULPA (Tinananon Kulamanon Lumadong Panaghiusa). Once in the town's Barangay Poblacion they switched to ponies for the ride up country to the town's Barangay Sagundanon. Arriving at the midway point in Barangay Kabalantian at 3PM he was told by villagers that Alamara paramilitary soldiers were waiting at their intended destination of Barangay Sagundanon to ambush and kill Fausto, the Barangay Captain being the father of two Alamara leaders and an uncle to the highest ranking Alamara in that municipality, Kumander Bansilan.
Alamara is one of several tribal-based force multipliers co-opted under the CAFGU programme though run under an entirely different protocol according to a sub-directory (OPlan Alsa Lumad) of the formerano COIN (Counterinsurgency) blueprint Bantay Laya II. Taking tribes existing in the hinterlands and using elements within them as a counterweight to the Maoists (NPA) sounds real good on paper and indeed, if properly managed it could be just that, the reality is quite different. Taking cultures that thrive on violence and giving them the means to create even more sophisticated violence must be micro-managed. In any event, I digress too much as usual, back to the show...
Villagers in Barangay Kabalantian saved Father Tentorio's life by warning him of what awaited him and his four layworkers. Too far up country to make it back to the town proper safely before nightfall the nervous missionary priest availed himself to the villagers' hospitality. Shacking up with the layworkers and more than a dozen villagers nervously excited to have a rare visitor amongst them, all the more so that it was a priest, a person of respect, they all catiously laid awake praying to survive the long night ahead. At nightfall the Bagani solders walked out of the jungle having skirted the rutted trail as they moved downhill from Father Tentorio's original destination in the hopes that they would be able to waylay the priest and his companions.
As the paramilitary soldiers began searching the villager's homes a quick thinking man suggested that the Bagani join him and other villagers who were heading to another barangay for a party. At first reluctant the soldiers stomachs did the final convincing when that same villager promised that "lechon baboy" (roast pig) was on the menu. In the end a yearning for pork saved Father Fausto and as soon as the Bagani had left guided by that same quick thinking villager, the group rushed headlong down the trail on their ponies and back into the town proper.
PIME, Father Fausto's Order is a product of the Church liberalisation that grew out of Vatican II where the Roman Catholic Church sought to engage non-Catholics with inter-faith encounters and a greater respect for other ways of life. Priests such as Father Fausto sought to "protect" indigenous cultures although, since they are also evangelising (as in "converting") they too are engaging in a large amount of hypocrisy. Moreover, wherever PIME goes division and anomosity follows. Though, like the majority of Catholic institutions in the Philippines PIME supports environmental causes, it often does so without respecting traditional practices like the typical slash and burn farming upon which most Lumad Tribes subsist. While PIME supports indigenous languages it does so by using these languages to try and change fundamental aspects of tribal culture.
There is a tendency amongst many Westerners to see indigenous groups as somehow more authentic, more in touch with their own environments, and somehow more wiser and noble than other more adaptative cultures and outlooks. Truth be told, every Lumad Tribe practiced slavery well into the 1960s and most practiced human sacrifice well into the 20th Century. Most continue to engage in child marriage, most disdain modern educational systems, and most continue to live in unhygienic environments where less than 10% have sufficient nutrition. So what do foreign priests like those of the PIME Order hope to accomplish? They don't concentrate on THOSE aspects...Of course they are no different than the Bible-thumping Protestant missionaries who rail against indigenous values. In the end both hope to bring the "poor" and "backwards" Lumad to Christ. In doing so the Lumad will lose the richest part of their culture, the spiritual aspect. In other words, PIME priests can learn five languages, dress the part (Father Germia is famous for wearing a B'laan turban) and even smile as shaman bless tribal festivities but in the end they are EXACTLY like their chauvenistic Protestant counterparts.
People wonder how someone could think to kill a priest. If one is aware of the dynamics involved the thought then becomes, "Who would anyone NOT want to kill a priest?" Before Father Fausto arrived in Arakan in 1985 the Manobo Lumad living there were fully united. There was no division. Yes, they suffered from periodic encroachment, from both Maguindanowans (Muslims) and Illongos (Christian lowlanders), but united they were able to retain their core values, those things that mattered most to them. Today? Even those organisations founded by Father Fausto himself have fractured into hate-filled factions. The change brought by PIME has irrevocably harmed the Manobo of Arakan AND IF we are to truly discuss the life of Father Fausto we must honestly consider that irrefutable truth.
By 1985, the year Father Fausto arrived in Arakan the Kidapawan Diocese had already had 70 members murdered for Church-related activities. Like most Dioceses in Mindanao Kidapawan was riddled with adherants of Liberation Theology, a creed that grew out of the social unrest of early-1960s Latin America and fixated upon Marxism as the proper orientation for social change. This is what led to the aforementioned murder of Father Tullio Favali in that same year. Ironically it was Father Peter "Pads" Geremia who had been the actual target. Safe to say that many within the Diocese had already made the short hop out of Liberation Theology and into bonafide armed "resistance." Many PIME missionary priests made it onto AFP Orders of Battle, lists of targets for neutralisation although one should not assume that this necessarily relegates neutralisation to violence. Revocation of one's Immigration status, as just one example, works just as well.
At the same time the hunger for land meant that such priests had become the walking targets for businessmen and politicians in both the Muslim and the Christian communities. How much more so when mining and timber concessions enter the mix? The list of those who would like to see such priests disappear, by any means possible, is long indeed.
On the day in question, Monday, October 17th, 2011, at 730AM Father Fausto Trentorio walked from the "convento," the rectory in the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish compound to the building's carport and opened the door to his burgandy Suzuki Jimmy. As he opened the door he turned to face a man wearing a full motorcycle helmet who quickly raised his right arm and in quick succession fired ten rounds from his 9MM pistol. The first three rounds, conventional ball peen bullets all struck Father Fausto in his abdomen, causing him to collapse onto the SUV's front seat. The final seven, all hollow point, struck his neck and head killing him immediately. Running the 50 meters from the carport to the road the gunman hopped onto the back of an idling motorcycle which quickly drove out of Arakan's Barangay Poblacion and into nearby Davao City. Assistants rushed Father Fausto to the neighbouring municipality of Antipas and its small public hospital but of course he was declared DOA, probably having died just after falling from the first rounds.
There are at least two eyewitnesses now being "guarded," and I use that word very loosely, by the PNP, or Philippine National Police. Directly across the street from the church compound is an elementary school whose staff and students had been in the middle of a school function outside when the murder took place. Moreover, soldiers from the 3rd Special Forces Battalion (Airborne), the element now with Operational Control over Arakan, were on hand and yet nobody raised an eyebrow as ten rounds were fired. The shots were heard, as both students and staff had remarked about them but nevertheless, nothing. This of course has ignited a firestorm of rumor and innuendo in which the AFP, or the Armed Forces of the Philippines gets to wear the Guilty Hat as it so often does.
It is no secret that Father Fausto was a Leftist, and that his name WAS on past Orders of Battle for the 57IB (Infantry Battalion), the element with previous Operational Control over the municipality. However, that is a far cry from culpability. The 3rd SF (Special Forces) isn't going to dirty itself in such a localised objective. They aren't there for the long haul and couldn't actually care less about Father Fausto. SOCOM, or Special Operations Command operates in tactical mode. Killing someone who doesn't pull the trigger is not a tactical operation. Strategic Operations are an entirely different ball game. The 57IB? They definitely have strategic concerns but with that sector removed from their playing field the killing of a priest has a pis* poor cost benefit ratio. Of course that doesn't mean the 57IB still doesn't harbour some ill feelings but I don't think it is plausible. Not suprisingly Father Fausto's buddies in the NPA don't agree with me with the NEMRC, or Northeast Mindanao Regional Committee going so far as to accuse the 57IB outright. Of course Arkan lies within the SMRC (Southern Mindanao Regional Committee), NOT the NEMRC and the NEMRC seems to be unaware that Arakan is now outside the 57IB's Area of Responsibility. Propaganda, no matter the source, is usually geared towards such semi-retarded backfill.
In the interest of presenting all the facts however, I need to add the following: Just two days before the killing a PNP checkpoint in the municipality stopped a motorcycle whose driver had a rice sack with nine M16s in it. Taking him to the MPO, or Municipal Police Office as police stations are called, handed him and his "sack" to the town's Police Director received an SMS (text) from the CO, or Commanding Officer of the 3rd SF garrison informing him that the rifles were his. Why the AFP would transport a squad worth of rifles by a civilian carrying a rice sack is, I admit, questionable but one must remember that this IS Mindanao were both the AFP and the PNP regularly sell their weaponry, as well as rent it out.
Then, the evening before Father Fausto's killing two AFP trucks were slowly moving through Barangay Poblacion. When concerned residents questioned the PNP they were informed that it was simply SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for impending PDOs, or Peace and Development Operations.
Under the current ISP (Internal Security Plan), Oplan Bayanihan (Operational Plan Helping Each Other) the AFP has reversed the previous paradigm of 80:20 Tactical:CMO (Combat:Hearts and Minds type community service operations) to the inverse 80:20 (CMO:Tactical, with Tactical now predominantly being intelligence driven as opposed to the former manner which was almost entirely reactive). In other words, where as the AFP concentrated on winning insurgencies by force it now aims to do so by eliminating insurgency's root causes, things like poverty, poor hygeine, lack of infrastructure, etc. In doing this the Army is concentrating its deployments on PDTs, or Peace and Development Teams. The only problem with the answer offered to residents by the PNP is that PDTs do not work at night.
Still, I do not see this as an AFP-connected action. More likely than not it is simply a member of one of those opposing factions I mentioned. When Father Fausto arrived in Arakan in 1985 there was an organisation known as "LUMAD-Mindanao," then standing on its last legs. Like most such groups it was organised by multi-sectoral front organisations as a way in which to both recruit new members for the NPA as well as to serve as an above board arm of the movement and a way in which to funnel materiel support to the Left. Then Father Fausto helped found a successor organisation, "PANAGTAGBO," (Encounter), and finally its current incarnation, "MALUPA," (Manobo Lumadnong Panghiusa), the sister-organisation to the previously mentioned "TIKULPA" in Bukidnon Province. MALUPA, in 2004, began fracturing into its current two main factions, Father Fausto led one faction.
As for Father Fausto's environmental concerns, Arakan is not blessed with great mineral wealth nor is there much room for heavy logging with its virgin timber and most second growth being long gone, though he did lead re-forestation efforts but THAT isn't something that would generate high levels of anomosity. I am always saddened to see ignorance spread as when self described "Anti-Mining Advocates" start blaming incidents such as this murder on the victim's "opposition to mining." Not only does Arakan not have a single commercial mine, it doesn't even have small-scale, so called Artisinal Mining! In fact, in the entire province of North Cotabato there are merely two pending EXPLORATION applications, neither which come anywhere near the Arkan Valley, not to mention the town of Arkan!
With Father Fausto Tentorio now laid out in a blue coffin for his wake inside the parish church, Father Peter "Pads" Geremia who now serves as Diocesan Co-ordinator of Tribal Activities in addition to his recently re-shouldering parish responsibilities in Columbio, in Sultan Kudarat Province, convinced Father Fausto's parishoners that a more suitable coffin could be fashioned from one of the mahogany trees Father Fausto had planted within the compound. As the coffin is being fashioned the PNP has somehow convinced PIME, Father Fausto and Geremia's Order, to allow the PNP's PRO-12, or Police Regional Office for Region 12, to perform one of two autopsies planned for the priest's remains. His death has become not only a national matter but an international cause celebre as well. The Vatican says that each year 30 to 35 missionary priests are murdered or killed in war the world over. PIME has 80 fallen priests all on its own so that Father Fausto's death is neither a suprise nor even unusual and yet it seems to shock even Filipinos when a foreigner is killed.
Opposing Father Neri's environmental partisanship were a group of Higaon-on Tribal CAAs, or Civilian Armed Auxiliaries, more commonly called "CAFGUS" in reference to the most common of the CAA entities, the Civilian Auxiliary Force Geographical Unit, though at the time it signified Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit. This detachment, the Guinoyuran Post, had gravitated towards organised criminal activity. Even today, 20 years later, that part of the island is still very remote and so the CAAs made money in the tablon-tablon, or illegal logging trade that fed three full time saw mills in just Valencia alone (which hadn't been made a city at that point in time.
By October of 1991 Father Neri had confiscated nearly 7,000 board feet of prime timber, an astounding amount and all the more so when one realises that the then-30 year old priest had but 11 months guarding the jungle around his adopted village. On the day in question, October 14th, 1991, Neri left the rectory where he lived in Valencia proper and picked up his friend and assistant, 20 year old Jacqueline for the long ride over the 18 kilometer dirt track leading uphill to Barangay Guinoyuran. The barangay was holding its patron saint fiesta at which Father Neri was scheduled to perfom a Mass. Finishing by the early afternoon Jacquelin and Neri gathered their few belongings and began their long ride down hill into the centre of Valencia. The sordid tale is told in its entierty in the post entitled, "Remembering Father Nerilito "Neri" Dazo Satur."
Ironically, while lamenting a time and place which relegates people who devote their lives towards helping others (or so the story goes) as mere game or a hunted quarry, I learned that yet another Catholic priest had lost his life to Mindanao's almost senseless violence just that very morning. Father Fausto Tentorio, known to his parishoners as "Tatay Pops" (Father Pops), an Italian priest who has lived and worked on Mindanao for well over three decades was shot to death as he was about to leave his parish on the Bukidnon, Davao del Sur, and North Cotabato Provincial borders for the long hard ride to North Cotabato's capital, Kidapawan City for the Diocesan Monthly Presbyterium at the Bishop's Residence.
A member of PIME, or the Pontificium Institutum Missionum Exterarum (Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions from the original Latin), a Vatican-based Order devoted to missionary work, he arrived at PIME's Regional Headquarters in Mindanao's Zamboanga City fresh from Rome in 1978, just a year after his ordination. First assigned to Zamboanga City's Barangay Ayala in that same province of Zamboanga del Norte as an Assistant Parish Priest Father Fausto immersed himself in the local culture. Two years later, in 1980, as the Archdiocese of Zamboanga began preperations to launch the Prelature of Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay Province, where most PIME priests were then serving in the municipality of Aurora, the Archbishop of Zamboanga felt that PIME had fufilled much of its mandate in developing new and/or struggling parishes and converting whatever Lumad (Animist Hilltribesmen) hadn't already been strong armed and shoved into the faith of "love and compassion." Needing new Lumads to ruin, Zamboanga's Bishop took the bulk of PIME's recruits, pointed them towards Kidapawan (not yet a city) in North Cotabato Province and screamed, "Go! ...Besides, the Bishop of the then-Prelature of Kidapawan was to become the Bishop in Ipil. As a Jesuit he naturally wanted to associate with Jesuits and so the Archbishop of Zamboanga obliged him by shuffling the deck. PIME, as foreigners with a negligible presence were organisationally expendable. PIME (most) moved to Kidapawan while Jesuits in Kidapawan moved to Zamboanga Sibugay Province (if Catholics cannot even get along amongst themselves how can they try to preach to the rest of us? Just a thought).
Father Fausto, with most other PIME missionary priests transferred to the Archdiocese of Cotabato and its Prelature of Kidapawan with its headquarters in the town of the same name. The Archbishop assigned Fausto to the municipality of Columbio in the neighbouring province of Sultan Kudarat where he was soon made its Mission Director. In 1985 Father Fausto was again transferred, this time to the municipality of Arakan in the province of North Cotabato, where he stayed until his death. Arakan sits in a deep valley in the foothills rising out of Maguindanao Province and leading into the bordering the aforementioned provinces of Bukidnon and Davao del Sur.
It was that same year, 1985, that another PIME missionary priest assigned to North Cotabato Province became a bizarre footnote in Philippine History. Father Tullio Favali was an Assistant Parish Priest in the municipality of Tulunan where he served beside yet another PIME missionary, the infamous Father Peter "Pads" Geremia. For the sake of brevity I will try to keep this short and sweet by only offering the scantest of outlines, though I am also composing a companion entry on the murders and kidnappings of other PIME missionary priests that have taken place on Mindanao; when people discuss Father Tullio they always talk about his having been killed by Ilaga paramilitary leader Norberto Manero Jr. The story goes that Manero killed Father Tullio and then, in line with his cultic religious beliefs he and his group ate Father Tullio's brain. The story has become iconic of the anarchy always associated with our fair isle, Mindanao. The problem though is that none of it is true. Norberto Manero Jr. did NOT kill Father Tullio. Norberto Manero Jr. did NOT cannabalise Father Tullio, let alone eat his brain. Again, that will be discussed in the companion entry I will post just after this one goes up. Likewise, the KFR, or Kidnapping for Ransom of PIME Fathers Giancarlo Bossi and Giuseppe Bendetti and the murder of Father Salvador Carzedda will also be discussed at length in that same entry.
Father Fausto himself had been no stranger to the wanton violence and two faced gross assaults that characterise life on Mindanao. On October 6th, 2003 Fausto and four lay assistants drove by motorcycle to the municipality of Kitaotao in Bukidnon Province to speak to a Barangay Captain about Fausto's then-nascent organisation, TIKULPA (Tinananon Kulamanon Lumadong Panaghiusa). Once in the town's Barangay Poblacion they switched to ponies for the ride up country to the town's Barangay Sagundanon. Arriving at the midway point in Barangay Kabalantian at 3PM he was told by villagers that Alamara paramilitary soldiers were waiting at their intended destination of Barangay Sagundanon to ambush and kill Fausto, the Barangay Captain being the father of two Alamara leaders and an uncle to the highest ranking Alamara in that municipality, Kumander Bansilan.
Alamara is one of several tribal-based force multipliers co-opted under the CAFGU programme though run under an entirely different protocol according to a sub-directory (OPlan Alsa Lumad) of the formerano COIN (Counterinsurgency) blueprint Bantay Laya II. Taking tribes existing in the hinterlands and using elements within them as a counterweight to the Maoists (NPA) sounds real good on paper and indeed, if properly managed it could be just that, the reality is quite different. Taking cultures that thrive on violence and giving them the means to create even more sophisticated violence must be micro-managed. In any event, I digress too much as usual, back to the show...
Villagers in Barangay Kabalantian saved Father Tentorio's life by warning him of what awaited him and his four layworkers. Too far up country to make it back to the town proper safely before nightfall the nervous missionary priest availed himself to the villagers' hospitality. Shacking up with the layworkers and more than a dozen villagers nervously excited to have a rare visitor amongst them, all the more so that it was a priest, a person of respect, they all catiously laid awake praying to survive the long night ahead. At nightfall the Bagani solders walked out of the jungle having skirted the rutted trail as they moved downhill from Father Tentorio's original destination in the hopes that they would be able to waylay the priest and his companions.
As the paramilitary soldiers began searching the villager's homes a quick thinking man suggested that the Bagani join him and other villagers who were heading to another barangay for a party. At first reluctant the soldiers stomachs did the final convincing when that same villager promised that "lechon baboy" (roast pig) was on the menu. In the end a yearning for pork saved Father Fausto and as soon as the Bagani had left guided by that same quick thinking villager, the group rushed headlong down the trail on their ponies and back into the town proper.
PIME, Father Fausto's Order is a product of the Church liberalisation that grew out of Vatican II where the Roman Catholic Church sought to engage non-Catholics with inter-faith encounters and a greater respect for other ways of life. Priests such as Father Fausto sought to "protect" indigenous cultures although, since they are also evangelising (as in "converting") they too are engaging in a large amount of hypocrisy. Moreover, wherever PIME goes division and anomosity follows. Though, like the majority of Catholic institutions in the Philippines PIME supports environmental causes, it often does so without respecting traditional practices like the typical slash and burn farming upon which most Lumad Tribes subsist. While PIME supports indigenous languages it does so by using these languages to try and change fundamental aspects of tribal culture.
There is a tendency amongst many Westerners to see indigenous groups as somehow more authentic, more in touch with their own environments, and somehow more wiser and noble than other more adaptative cultures and outlooks. Truth be told, every Lumad Tribe practiced slavery well into the 1960s and most practiced human sacrifice well into the 20th Century. Most continue to engage in child marriage, most disdain modern educational systems, and most continue to live in unhygienic environments where less than 10% have sufficient nutrition. So what do foreign priests like those of the PIME Order hope to accomplish? They don't concentrate on THOSE aspects...Of course they are no different than the Bible-thumping Protestant missionaries who rail against indigenous values. In the end both hope to bring the "poor" and "backwards" Lumad to Christ. In doing so the Lumad will lose the richest part of their culture, the spiritual aspect. In other words, PIME priests can learn five languages, dress the part (Father Germia is famous for wearing a B'laan turban) and even smile as shaman bless tribal festivities but in the end they are EXACTLY like their chauvenistic Protestant counterparts.
People wonder how someone could think to kill a priest. If one is aware of the dynamics involved the thought then becomes, "Who would anyone NOT want to kill a priest?" Before Father Fausto arrived in Arakan in 1985 the Manobo Lumad living there were fully united. There was no division. Yes, they suffered from periodic encroachment, from both Maguindanowans (Muslims) and Illongos (Christian lowlanders), but united they were able to retain their core values, those things that mattered most to them. Today? Even those organisations founded by Father Fausto himself have fractured into hate-filled factions. The change brought by PIME has irrevocably harmed the Manobo of Arakan AND IF we are to truly discuss the life of Father Fausto we must honestly consider that irrefutable truth.
By 1985, the year Father Fausto arrived in Arakan the Kidapawan Diocese had already had 70 members murdered for Church-related activities. Like most Dioceses in Mindanao Kidapawan was riddled with adherants of Liberation Theology, a creed that grew out of the social unrest of early-1960s Latin America and fixated upon Marxism as the proper orientation for social change. This is what led to the aforementioned murder of Father Tullio Favali in that same year. Ironically it was Father Peter "Pads" Geremia who had been the actual target. Safe to say that many within the Diocese had already made the short hop out of Liberation Theology and into bonafide armed "resistance." Many PIME missionary priests made it onto AFP Orders of Battle, lists of targets for neutralisation although one should not assume that this necessarily relegates neutralisation to violence. Revocation of one's Immigration status, as just one example, works just as well.
At the same time the hunger for land meant that such priests had become the walking targets for businessmen and politicians in both the Muslim and the Christian communities. How much more so when mining and timber concessions enter the mix? The list of those who would like to see such priests disappear, by any means possible, is long indeed.
On the day in question, Monday, October 17th, 2011, at 730AM Father Fausto Trentorio walked from the "convento," the rectory in the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish compound to the building's carport and opened the door to his burgandy Suzuki Jimmy. As he opened the door he turned to face a man wearing a full motorcycle helmet who quickly raised his right arm and in quick succession fired ten rounds from his 9MM pistol. The first three rounds, conventional ball peen bullets all struck Father Fausto in his abdomen, causing him to collapse onto the SUV's front seat. The final seven, all hollow point, struck his neck and head killing him immediately. Running the 50 meters from the carport to the road the gunman hopped onto the back of an idling motorcycle which quickly drove out of Arakan's Barangay Poblacion and into nearby Davao City. Assistants rushed Father Fausto to the neighbouring municipality of Antipas and its small public hospital but of course he was declared DOA, probably having died just after falling from the first rounds.
There are at least two eyewitnesses now being "guarded," and I use that word very loosely, by the PNP, or Philippine National Police. Directly across the street from the church compound is an elementary school whose staff and students had been in the middle of a school function outside when the murder took place. Moreover, soldiers from the 3rd Special Forces Battalion (Airborne), the element now with Operational Control over Arakan, were on hand and yet nobody raised an eyebrow as ten rounds were fired. The shots were heard, as both students and staff had remarked about them but nevertheless, nothing. This of course has ignited a firestorm of rumor and innuendo in which the AFP, or the Armed Forces of the Philippines gets to wear the Guilty Hat as it so often does.
It is no secret that Father Fausto was a Leftist, and that his name WAS on past Orders of Battle for the 57IB (Infantry Battalion), the element with previous Operational Control over the municipality. However, that is a far cry from culpability. The 3rd SF (Special Forces) isn't going to dirty itself in such a localised objective. They aren't there for the long haul and couldn't actually care less about Father Fausto. SOCOM, or Special Operations Command operates in tactical mode. Killing someone who doesn't pull the trigger is not a tactical operation. Strategic Operations are an entirely different ball game. The 57IB? They definitely have strategic concerns but with that sector removed from their playing field the killing of a priest has a pis* poor cost benefit ratio. Of course that doesn't mean the 57IB still doesn't harbour some ill feelings but I don't think it is plausible. Not suprisingly Father Fausto's buddies in the NPA don't agree with me with the NEMRC, or Northeast Mindanao Regional Committee going so far as to accuse the 57IB outright. Of course Arkan lies within the SMRC (Southern Mindanao Regional Committee), NOT the NEMRC and the NEMRC seems to be unaware that Arakan is now outside the 57IB's Area of Responsibility. Propaganda, no matter the source, is usually geared towards such semi-retarded backfill.
In the interest of presenting all the facts however, I need to add the following: Just two days before the killing a PNP checkpoint in the municipality stopped a motorcycle whose driver had a rice sack with nine M16s in it. Taking him to the MPO, or Municipal Police Office as police stations are called, handed him and his "sack" to the town's Police Director received an SMS (text) from the CO, or Commanding Officer of the 3rd SF garrison informing him that the rifles were his. Why the AFP would transport a squad worth of rifles by a civilian carrying a rice sack is, I admit, questionable but one must remember that this IS Mindanao were both the AFP and the PNP regularly sell their weaponry, as well as rent it out.
Then, the evening before Father Fausto's killing two AFP trucks were slowly moving through Barangay Poblacion. When concerned residents questioned the PNP they were informed that it was simply SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for impending PDOs, or Peace and Development Operations.
Under the current ISP (Internal Security Plan), Oplan Bayanihan (Operational Plan Helping Each Other) the AFP has reversed the previous paradigm of 80:20 Tactical:CMO (Combat:Hearts and Minds type community service operations) to the inverse 80:20 (CMO:Tactical, with Tactical now predominantly being intelligence driven as opposed to the former manner which was almost entirely reactive). In other words, where as the AFP concentrated on winning insurgencies by force it now aims to do so by eliminating insurgency's root causes, things like poverty, poor hygeine, lack of infrastructure, etc. In doing this the Army is concentrating its deployments on PDTs, or Peace and Development Teams. The only problem with the answer offered to residents by the PNP is that PDTs do not work at night.
Still, I do not see this as an AFP-connected action. More likely than not it is simply a member of one of those opposing factions I mentioned. When Father Fausto arrived in Arakan in 1985 there was an organisation known as "LUMAD-Mindanao," then standing on its last legs. Like most such groups it was organised by multi-sectoral front organisations as a way in which to both recruit new members for the NPA as well as to serve as an above board arm of the movement and a way in which to funnel materiel support to the Left. Then Father Fausto helped found a successor organisation, "PANAGTAGBO," (Encounter), and finally its current incarnation, "MALUPA," (Manobo Lumadnong Panghiusa), the sister-organisation to the previously mentioned "TIKULPA" in Bukidnon Province. MALUPA, in 2004, began fracturing into its current two main factions, Father Fausto led one faction.
As for Father Fausto's environmental concerns, Arakan is not blessed with great mineral wealth nor is there much room for heavy logging with its virgin timber and most second growth being long gone, though he did lead re-forestation efforts but THAT isn't something that would generate high levels of anomosity. I am always saddened to see ignorance spread as when self described "Anti-Mining Advocates" start blaming incidents such as this murder on the victim's "opposition to mining." Not only does Arakan not have a single commercial mine, it doesn't even have small-scale, so called Artisinal Mining! In fact, in the entire province of North Cotabato there are merely two pending EXPLORATION applications, neither which come anywhere near the Arkan Valley, not to mention the town of Arkan!
With Father Fausto Tentorio now laid out in a blue coffin for his wake inside the parish church, Father Peter "Pads" Geremia who now serves as Diocesan Co-ordinator of Tribal Activities in addition to his recently re-shouldering parish responsibilities in Columbio, in Sultan Kudarat Province, convinced Father Fausto's parishoners that a more suitable coffin could be fashioned from one of the mahogany trees Father Fausto had planted within the compound. As the coffin is being fashioned the PNP has somehow convinced PIME, Father Fausto and Geremia's Order, to allow the PNP's PRO-12, or Police Regional Office for Region 12, to perform one of two autopsies planned for the priest's remains. His death has become not only a national matter but an international cause celebre as well. The Vatican says that each year 30 to 35 missionary priests are murdered or killed in war the world over. PIME has 80 fallen priests all on its own so that Father Fausto's death is neither a suprise nor even unusual and yet it seems to shock even Filipinos when a foreigner is killed.
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