MANILA, Philippines—The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Thursday thanked government authorities and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for the safe release of Irish missionary Fr. Michael “Mick” Sinnott.

“We appreciate and we are grateful to all those who worked for the release of Father Sinnott,” said the CBCP president, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo.

“We are also hoping that a similar situation will not happen again. We have to treasure and be grateful to the missionaries working the people in Mindanao,” Lagdameo said.

He also expressed hope that the government would continue its peace negotiations with the MILF.

Sinnott, who turns 80 on Dec. 19, is a member of the Columban missionaries.

“He is a great man of prayer,” Fr. Sean Coyle, himself a Columban. “He’s a man of outstanding integrity and simplicity.”

Coyle added that Sinnott’s “one weakness” was ice cream. “He’ll be able to enjoy a heap of it soon.”

Sinnott had said he was kidnapped by a “lost command” and “original lumad” of Mindanao.

It was the first time that a kidnap-for-ransom group was identified by its victim as lumad (indigenous people).

Coincidentally, Sinnott was released on the first day of a national conference of lumad in Quezon City.

The gathering, called “Comparative Learning Conference of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines,” has for its theme “Lessons Learned in Responding to Armed Conflict and Building Peace.”

One of Thursday’s resource speakers was Luz Mery, an indigenous woman from Colombia, who spoke about the women’s role in advancing the rights of indigenous peoples.

Earlier, Columban regional director Fr. Patrick O’Donoghue decried the fact that “Mick, Gabriel [Canizares] and all the other kidnap victims, [have become] ‘commodities.’”

“The sin in what happens to all of them is that their dignity and truth are ignored and they are turned into ‘assets,’” O’Donoghue said.

Canizares, a school principal from Jolo, Sulu, was kidnapped last month and beheaded recently by his captors.

“Yes, many were calling out to the same God for Gabriel, and I have no answers why God would allow that young man to die and save Mick,” O’Donoghue said. Dona Z. Pazzibugan and Ma. Ceres P. Doyo