It is not surprising for the IFI to have so many priests and even bishops who are at the same time also high-profile activists. The involvement of these IFI clerics in the cause-oriented movement is but a reflection of their church’s activist orientation, which is a product of its revolutionary heritage.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat.com

During this year’s June 12 rally commemorating Independence Day, Bp. Alberto Ramento – the ninth supreme bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI or Philippine Independent Church) – expressed some pride at being the chairman of his church’s Council of Bishops. In so being, he said, he was the chairman of what he described as a group of “revolutionary bishops.”

In the first eight days of this month (October) alone, the IFI lost two of its men of the cloth. One of them was Ramento himself who at the time of his death was bishop of his church’s Diocese of Tarlac. The other was Fr. Dionisio Gingging of Tago, Surigao del Sur. Both died violent deaths, with Ramento succumbing to several stab wounds in the chest and back on Oct. 3 and Gingging being stabbed and shot five days after.

Though Tarlac police have “closed” Ramento’s case, dismissing it as a mere “robbery with homicide” perpetrated by four drug-crazed youths they recently presented to media, people who knew the IFI’s ninth supreme bishop are convinced there is something else to the killing.

An independent fact-finding team led by lawyer Rex Fernandez found that the DVD players and mobile phone supposed to have been taken by the killers from Ramento were actually stolen on two separate incidents before the killing. The killing, the fact-finding team found, took place when there was nothing more to be stolen from the dilapidated rectory where Ramento stayed.

As early as mid-2005, Ramento had said of having received information from his military contacts that he was on the Order of Battle, together with four IFI priests: Fr. Mario Quince, parish priest of Paniqui, Tarlac; Fr. Gregorio Lacanaria, parish priest of Victoria, Tarlac; Fr. Marshal Bautista, parish priest of Pura, Tarlac; and Fr. William Tadena, parish priest of La Paz, Tarlac. Tadena had been shot to death on March 13 that same year.

That same year also, an IFI priest – Fr. Allan Caparro of the Diocese of Samar – was ambushed together with his wife Ailyn. Both fortunately survived.

In Gingging’s case, Chief Supt. Antonio Nanas, Caraga regional police director, immediately issued a statement saying “personal grudge” was behind the killing.

Two days before Gingging’s death, Fr. Antonio Ablon of Cagayan de Oro City – also belonging to the IFI – had received a threat on his cellular phone. “Fr. Ablon, patay gain ang supreme bishop ikaw pa kaha i sample ka namo dinhi sa CDO” (Fr. Ablon, even the supreme bishop was killed, all the more can you be made an example here in Cagayan de Oro City), read the message which was reportedly sent from the number 09203546270.

Activist clerics, revolutionary origins

Ablon, Quince, Lacanaria, Bautista, and Caparro are all known as activists and human rights advocates – as were Gingging, Ramento, and Tadena.

Ramento, in particular, was at the time of his death the co-chairman of the Ecumenical Bishops Forum (EBF) together with Roman Catholic Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez of Caloocan City and a convener of the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL). He and Tadena were staunch supporters of the Hacienda Luisita farm and mill workers, who staged a historic strike in 2004 demanding land distribution, higher wages and more benefits.

It is not surprising for the IFI to have so many priests and even bishops who are at the same time also high-profile activists. The involvement of these IFI clerics in the cause-oriented movement is but a reflection of their church’s activist orientation.

The IFI’s activist orientation is clear in the value that it places on liberty. “Liberty is one of the most precious gifts with which the Creator has favored us; therefore we may in no way set more limits to it than those, which the purest morality and right conscience impose on all things,” reads part of the1903 Doctrine and Constitutional Rules of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente.

The said document goes on to state that:

Our morality consists of loving the good for its own sake, and in saying this, we mean specifically that we ought to love, practice, and defend philanthropy, justice, honor, liberty, labor, and the sciences.

Philanthropy and justice are the distinctive characteristics, if it is true that we differ in some way from the other animals, which elevate our moral level with theirs.

Labor products us what we need and is the untouchable front of well-being. We must therefore love it and seek it always.

Honor dignifies and ennobles us.

The sciences provide our minds with necessary knowledge, and are the most valuable factors for our progress in all their branches.

Liberty and the noble ambitions, which it arouses, are the indispensable elements and the potent means for our exaltation for progress, for science, for civilization, and, in short, for our general perfection.

The IFI’s activist orientation as expressed in this concept of good is a product of the church’s revolutionary origins.

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