Fr. Fausto Tentorio. Photo from PIME website
Pope Benedict XVI expressed his condolences on Wednesday for the killing of Fr. Fausto Tentorio in Arakan, North Cotabato province, and praised the Italian missionary for his bravery and good work.
Tentorio was “a good priest, a fervent believer who for many years served the people of the Philippines in a courageous and indefatigable way,” the Pope said in a message to Giuseppe Pinto, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio in Manila.
The message to Pinto will be in Thursday’s edition of the Vatican’s official daily, Osservatore Romano.
Tentorio, 59, was shot inside his church compound in Arakan on Monday. He had served for the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in Mindanao since 1978.
In Kidapawan City, leaders of a Lumad group and the Church-based Basic Christian Communities (BCC) which Tentorio helped organize said they believed that he was a target of Oplan Bayanihan, a military strategy designed to cripple the communist New People’s Army (NPA) allegedly by targeting leaders of progressive groups.
According to Leoncio Libunio, head of the parish BCC formation, Oplan Bayanihan has two faces—the soft one, or winning the people’s hearts and minds, and the hard one, or total elimination.
The events leading to Tentorio’s killing show that he was a target, said Libunio and Norma Capuyan, chair of the Lumad group Apo Sandawa Lumadnong Panaghiusa sa Cotabato.
Libunio said that on October 12, five days before Tentorio’s killing and years after he was dropped from the Municipal Peace and Order Council, he was suddenly invited to say a prayer at the launch of the anticrime campaign spearheaded by the police and the military.
“But it was deceptive,” Libunio said. He said the launch—held at the police outpost near the Arakan terminal—was a “ploy” to make it appear that Tentorio, who had consistently opposed increased military presence in the town because of abuses against the Lumad, was on good terms with the military.
“It was part of the plan … so that when they carry out the plan, they will say, ‘Why would we do that [when] he was friendly with us?’” Libunio said.
Military’s mission
Colonel Leopoldo Galon Jr., spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command, told the Inquirer on Wednesday night that indeed the troops based in the area, the 57th Infantry Battalion (IB), had good relations with Tentorio.
Galon said the 57th IB even thanked Tentorio for agreeing to their request to say a prayer during the launch.
He said the military’s mission in Oplan Bayanihan was “to conduct support operations to win the peace in order to help the Filipino nation create an environment conducive for sustainable development and a just and lasting peace.”
“The desired effect is to force the Communist Party of the Philippines-NPA-National Democratic Front to abandon armed struggle,” Galon said.
But the “troops are commanded to strictly adhere to human rights, international humanitarian law and the rule of law, and zero tolerance for collateral damage,” he added
Education for Lumad
In the 1980s when Tentorio arrived in Arakan, he ran the Tribal Filipino Community Development Inc., giving assistance and services to indigenous groups in the communities covered by the parish.
This group eventually expanded to cover the Moro and Christian communities.
In 2008, Tentorio took over as coordinator of the Tribal Filipino Program of the Archdiocese of Kidapawan from Fr. Peter Geremia, who was assigned as parish priest in Columbio, Sultan Kudarat.
Tentorio also served as board member of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, a progressive congregation forming education support communities in remote areas not normally reached by government services.
“His support was focused on giving education and health services, especially for the Lumad and the deprived sectors,” Capuyan said.
For example, she said, Tentorio helped set up daycare centers in remote areas in Arakan, in Kitaotao town in Bukidnon province, and in some parts of Compostela Valley.
Capuyan said these daycare centers used the indigenous people’s curriculum, inculcating the Lumad culture and tradition, and sometimes even using the Lumad language in the classroom.
She said there were 47 such daycare centers in Arakan alone, and 23 in the hinterlands of Kitaotao and Compostela Valley, and even in Davao Oriental province.
Health programs
Tentorio also fully supported health programs that tap indigenous herbal knowledge and alternative medicine, Capuyan said.
She said these programs made up for the lack of health services in the remote villages, where most people get sick and die without seeing a doctor.
“Our program on alternative medicine, for instance, has advanced so that we can already process indigenous materials into capsules, granules and syrups,” Capuyan said. “We have evolved. We are not limited to boiling herbs.”
Capuyan said Tentorio did not limit himself to extending health and education assistance to deprived communities. She said he was also active in efforts to help residents of these communities understand the system that had kept them impoverished.
“He opened their eyes to the fact that the oppressive system had to change because as long as this system remains, they will remain poor,” Capuyan said.
She added that as a priest, Tentorio was exposed to the suffering of people in the neglected hinterland villages, and did not close his eyes to it.
‘We’ll continue work’
At St. Paul the Apostle Church in Quezon City on Wednesday evening, Fr. Giovanni Pre, the provincial superior of PIME, said Tentorio’s work with the poor would be continued.
“We are afraid, but we will continue our mission,” Pre said during a concelebrated Mass for Tentorio. “We will continue with our job to help the poor despite difficult times and place.”
There are at least 20 PIME priests in the Philippines, mostly assigned in Mindanao, Pre said.
At the same Mass, activist priest Fr. Joe Dizon said members of the military and paramilitary groups were behind Tentorio’s killing.
“Based on the pattern of extrajudicial killings, state forces are responsible,” Dizon said.
Pre said that from his talk with policemen investigating the killing of Tentorio, investigators still had no leads.
He said he was hopeful that the bullets taken from Tentorio’s body could provide the necessary clues.
Sketch of possible killer
On the phone with the Inquirer in Manila Thursday, Chief Superintendent Lester Camba, deputy police regional director for administration, said a sketch of Tentorio’s possible assassin had been completed.
Camba said the sketch had yet to be released to the public.
“The sketch was based on the accounts of our witness, who managed to have face-to-face contact with the man who had been looking for the priest four times since January,” Camba said, adding:
“All angles are being looked into, including Tentorio’s activities and campaign against mining prior to his death. But so far, we cannot say anything as to the motive.”
At a news briefing, Justice Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III said a multiagency task force investigating Tentorio’s killing had identified two “possible suspects.”
But Baraan refused to provide details. “We are moving very carefully because we don’t want our investigation to fail,” he said.
Baraan did say that members of Task Force Tentorio were looking at the possibility that members of a local paramilitary group or of a private army employed by mining companies were behind the killing.
He said the task force was composed of local prosecutors, National Bureau of Investigation agents and policemen in Cotabato province.
“[Local militias] may also be involved because the last time he was targeted, paramilitary groups were involved,” said Baraan, who heads the Department of Justice Task Force on Extralegal Killings.
He said that the task force was investigating the purported role of the military in Tentorio’s killing, and that the priest was perceived as a “leftist.” Reports from Germelina Lacorte and Jeoffrey Maitem, Inquirer Mindanao; Nancy C. Carvajal and Marlon Ramos in Manila, and AFP
Originally posted at 01:50 pm | Thursday, October 20, 2011