‘Suspicious-looking men circling Fr. Tenturio’s convent days before slay’
ARAKAN, North Cotabato, Philippines — Residents and church workers say Italian missionary, Father Fausto Tentorio, had been under constant threat in the years he served indigenous communities in remote villages of Mindanao, and that there were even signs leading to his assassination on Monday.
Weeks before Tentorio was killed, a man came asking the church’s staff about his whereabouts, said Leoncio Lubiano, head of the church’s parish formation and catheticism.
It was the same man, not over 30 years old, who came to the church compound five or six times, and asked a day care worker about Tentorio.
Lubiano said that for several weeks in August and September until the week of Tentorio’s death, several fish carts were seen parked in areas around the Church’s compound.
Once or twice, Church’s staff members caught them roaming too close to the convent and other office buildings but when they were asked what they were doing there, the fish cart vendors who claimed they were from Digos City in Davao del Sur, said they just wanted to know what was inside.
One of them even tied his makeshift hammock at a shed inside the church compound and slept there.
“Sometimes, they slept here (church compound) at night. They were still around last week but on the day Father Fausto was killed, they were gone,” said Lubiano.
“They came every day and the Friday (Oct. 14) before he was shot, somebody actually tied their swing at a shed inside the church compound and slept there,” said another church worker.
Also on Oct. 14, soldiers belonging to the 57th Infantry Battalion were asking Basic Ecclesiastical Community leaders in the village of Badiangon if they had Tentorio’s mobile phone number but they said they had none.
The following day (Oct. 15), when Tentorio was saying mass in Barangay Dalag, the police confiscated a sack full of long firearms aboard a motorcycle driven by a civilian in the nearby Sitio Kamanangan, which travellers would have to pass through in going to Barangay Dalag.
Tentorio was already out of the area when the firearms were held. When the police held the civilian and confiscated the firearms, a military officer, only named Captain Espiritu, texted the police claiming ownership of the firearms.
Some residents said they were asking why a civilian was allowed to carry that many firearms. The police blotter showed that only two M16 rifles confiscated, but Lubiano said people were saying that a sack of firearms were confiscated.
On Sunday night (Oct. 16), two military vehicles were seen patrolling about the village. When lumad leaders asked the police about this, they were told this was only a regular part of their civil military operations.
The morning after (Oct. 17), Tentorio was killed.
When the gunman shot Tentorio in the garage right in the church compound, a flag ceremony was in progress in a school across the street.
Lubiano said some soldiers taking part in the school activity did nothing when the shots rang out.
Still, Angelito Magno, National Bureau of Investigation director for Central Mindanao, on Tuesday night, said they learned from their initial interviews with Tentorio’s colleagues that they did not notice any immediate threat to the priest in the last six months and that they were taken by surprise by his killing.
“There were previous threats … But there was no recent threat,” Magno said.
Church workers said they had received a lot of threats in the past because they and Tentorio were together in the struggle for ancestral land rights and had faced the same harassment from the military.
Libunio recounted a raid on June 12, 2009 when soldiers in full battle gear went inside the church compound, looking for Tentorio.
On that same day, Tentorio wrote a letter to Arakan mayor Romulo Tapgos, the chair of the Municipal Peace and Order Council, about the incident. He said an Army vehicle entered the church compound with nine fully armed men, passing through a secondary gate, at 3:45 p.m. He was asking if this was a normal act of the military to enter private properties without coordinating with owner.
He said, “I don’t have anything to hide and I assure the military they are welcome in our convent but I would appreciate it if they coordinate with me before scouring the church compound because I am the parish priest.”
“They went straight to the mango and mahogany trees without passing through the convent or asking permission,” Tentorio said in his letter. “When they were asked by one of the staff members what they were looking for, there was no clear response.”
Tentorio was a low-profile personality but he was, at times, invited to join activities, especially at the Sanguniang Bayan, which had passed a resolution against mining. Under the previous administration, he used to sit in the municipal peace and order council but the 57th IB asked the local government unit to remove him from the meetings, after he became vocal against the intensifying military operations which had been hitting, not the communist New People’s Army, but lumad communities.
Residents (whose identities the Philippine Daily Inquirer is keeping due to security reasons), said that on July 29, 2009, soldiers belonging to the 57th IB arrived in the villages of Tumanding, Sto Niño, Ma. Caridad and Salasang, and set up camps in the barangay halls, in the middle of the civilian community, near the school, the church, health center, women and daycare center.
The soldiers stayed in the area for 16 days and the lumad felt harassed when the military conducted a census and tagged members of the lumad group Tikulpa as members of the NPA.
The soldiers also required civilians to guide them during their operations, placing their lives in extreme danger.
Fr. Peter Geremia, another Italian priest, said it would be premature to accuse the New People’s Army of involvement in the killing.
“Il gallo che canta, ha fatto l’uovo (the hen making a lot of noise is laying an egg),” Geremia quoted an old Italian saying, when he heard some officials blaming the NPA for the death of Tentorio.
“Even during the time of Favali, they had the same pronouncement but it was proven the opposite,” he said, recalling how on April 11, 1985, a paramilitary group led by Norberto Manero, known in the area as Kumander Bucay, killed Italian priest, Fr. Tulio Favali, in Tulunan, Cotabato.
He said the killing of another Italian missionary, the third in the Philippines and the 18th in the list of PIME martyrs, reminded him again of the dark days that took the life of Favali.
“The killing was not only brutal but also very precise, executed by a professional killer who appeared to have all the time in his hands. He was not in a hurry,” he said, as people close to the priest still grappled with disbelief and shock.
“Even doctors can commit a mistake in their surgery but this killer did not, he was very thorough, he made sure he completed his task,” Geremia said.
He also described the act as something no normal person would do. “He was a trained professional and well prepared in his execution, which meant, he was not alone in that task, he had a companion.”
Now that authorities are blaming the NPA for the killing, it looks as the “Favali” days are back, according to the priest.
“They were saying the same things again,” said the Italian priest who spent 39 years, the longest part of his life, in the Philippines.
Geremia recalled that it took months before the perpetrators were punished for the killling of Favali.
But the difference of the Favali slaying from the Tentorio murder was that, in the case of the former, the killer brazenly declared the crime in a letter.
