Priest tells journalists: Continue telling the truth amid challenges

NEVER FORGET Relatives of the 58 victims of the Maguindanao massacre and their supporters gather at the site of the killings to mark the ninth year of the worst case of election-related violence and the single biggest attack on media workers in the country. INQUIRER photo / BARRY OHAYLAN

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Continue telling the truth, a priest told mediamen in a mass offered to the 58 victims of the Ampatuan massacre, adding that this is a call to journalists to pursue the truth even under dangerous situations.

Father Teofilo Pimentel, parish priest of Saint Joseph Church here, urged journalists to pursue the truth in the middle of challenges confronting media workers and journalists in the country.

“Speak the truth, whether you are Christian, Lumad or Muslim, when you speak the truth, you speak the voice of God,” Pimentel said in a noontime mass here on Friday, November 23, offered to the souls of 58 people, including 32 journalists, massacred in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province nine years ago and to the 12 journalists killed in different parts of the country since July this year.

“Journalists are always making sacrifices and to bring about truth is sometimes deadly,” Pimentel told journalists, mostly members and officers of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and the Zamboanga City Press Club Inc.

“Journalists all over the Philippines are demanding that the hearing be fasttracked,” Melanie Guanzon, chair of the NUJP Zambasulta (Zamboanga, Sulu, TawiTawi) chapter, said.

“We call on the government, President Rodrigo Duterte and the Department of Justice to give more attention to the case and exert more effort to bring justice to this nine-year-old case,” she added.

Guanzon said journalists in Zamboanga City decided to offer a mass to the 58 people killed in the Ampatuan massacre nine years ago and to the 12 journalists killed in different parts of the country since July this year.

“A sincere prayer for the families, to make them strong in pursuing justice and prayers for us to remain strong amid challenges,” Guanzon said.  /jpv

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