ARAKAN, North Cotabato—Late Monday afternoon, October 17, hundreds of people from different walks of life started to arrive at the Our Mother of Perpetual Parish here to wait for the body of slain Italian missionary Fr. Fausto Tentorio.

Most of them were elder Lumad (indigenous people) from different barangays whose sons and daughters, who fondly call Fr. Tentorio as Fr. Pops or Tatay Pops, are recipients of the scholarship program of the Indigenous Peoples Program of the Diocese of Kidapawan.

Everyone looked shocked while some were weeping on the sidelines. They could not believe that their beloved priest is gone.

At around 5 p.m., the blue casket with the priest’s body arrived and was taken straight in front of the altar, where dozens of his parishioners—the Lumad, church workers, farmers, teachers, town officials and students—were already waiting.

Silence filled the parish until the lid of the casket was finally opened, when a chorus of wailing mourners broke the eerie silence.

One of them is Wilfredo Yabe, a former church worker, who said he was shocked with Fr. Tentorio’s murder.

Yabe—who lived with Tentorio at the convent since he was 12 years old—said he has no idea why the priest was killed.

“He has helped a lot of people here, especially the Lumad. Many have benefited from the church’s scholarship program,” he said.

Now 44, Yabe is a government employee in this town.

Fr. Tentorio, 59, arrived in the Philippines in 1978 and was first assigned in Ayala, Archdiocese of Zamboanga, for two years. He was assigned to the Diocese of Kidapawan in 1980 and was stationed as mission administrator in the parish of Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, a parish comprising Lumad, Muslims and settlers.

Local police said Fr. Tentorio, a missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (Pime), was gunned down shortly before 8 a.m. at the garage beside his convent while preparing to leave for Kidapawan City, 52 kilometers away, for the monthly presbyterium.

Police Chief Insp. Benjamin Rioflorido, municipal police chief, said they could not yet establish any lead on the motive of killing Tentorio.

Rioflorido, who assumed his post a month ago, said the priest sustained 10 gunshot wounds but the police recovered only seven empty shells in the crime scene.

“He’s a very kind priest. He really cooperates here during our meetings or any activities. But his killing is really a big issue here,” the police chief said, as he admitted that pressure would surely mount on them to solve the case.

Initial investigations, Rioflorido said, showed that a lone gunman shot Tentorio about two meters away while the priest was about to board his vehicle.

Then the assailant fled toward the back portion of the parish compound where another person was waiting in a blue motorcycle, which served as their getaway vehicle.

“According to the witnesses, the [assailant] was holding his helmet when he shot Fr. Tentorio. Based on the empty shells we recovered, he was using a 9mm pistol,” said Rioflorido

Gigie Liboon, parish staff member, said she still could not believe that Tentorio is gone.

Liboon, a former recipient of Tentorio’s scholarship program, said the priest has not informed them of any problem on security concerns.

“[But] if there are problems related to our work, he would share to us. It is really hard for us to accept his death since we have no idea why this has happened to him,” said Liboon, one of the two church workers who rushed the priest to the hospital in the neighboring town of Antipas, 22 kilometers away.

Tentorio’s assistant, Fr. Giovanni Vettorello, Pime, admitted that he was also stunned upon learning that his fellow missionary was gunned down.  Vettorello was already in Kidapawan City on Sunday afternoon and was supposed to attend the meeting on Monday.

“We were already in Kidapawan when a fellow priest received a text message that Fr. Pops was gunned down in Arakan. My first reaction was, ‘I couldn’t believe it.’ So I grabbed my mobile phone and called Pops’s number. One of his staff answered my call. It was [only] then when I believed that he is gone,” the 43-year-old Pime missionary recalled in the dialect.

Like Liboon, Vettorello said Fr. Tentorio has not shared anything concerning his security issues.

The last time he saw the late priest scared and threatened was in 2003 when vigilante Lumad, known as Alamara, were hunting to kill Fr. Tentorio for his stance against the entry of large-scale plantations, mining and human-rights violations, recalled Vettorello.

Town Councilor Richard Gayatin said he and his fellow town officials were also shocked with the killing of Tentorio.

Gayatin, a former church worker in the parish here, said they have not heard any security issues concerning the priest.

 “Although Fr. Pops has been opposing the entry of large-scale plantations and mining here but that was years ago. [There were] no other controversial issues these days that involved the priest or the church,” he said in an interview.

A personal request

IN the 1990s, Fr. Tentorio planted several mahogany trees at the back of the convent.

Jerome Tacudao, who was then nine years old, recalled that the priest told him one of the trees must be used for his coffin when he would die. Fr. Tentorio stayed in Tacudao’s grandfather’s house for a while when he arrived in Arakan.

“He told us that if he will die and the trees are not yet fully grown, he would still want us to make a coffin out of the trees even if the coffin is made of round timbers,” Tacudao, now 31, recalled.

Liboon said the priest said the same to them.

On the day Fr. Tentorio was murdered, the mahogany was felled. His body will be transferred from blue coffin when his mahogany-made coffin is built.

Liboon also disclosed that Fr. Tentorio wanted to be cremated and divide his ashes into three: one to be scattered at Sitio Bantok in Barangay Tumanding, another part in the parish grounds and another in Kidapawan Diocese where his fellow Pime missionary Fr. Tulio Favali is buried.

Sitio Bantok is where Fr. Tentorio established a day- care center and a training facility for the Lumad.  

Favali was gunned down by a paramilitary group led by Nortberto Manero on April 11, 1985, in Tulunan town, also in North Cotabato.