Honoring Father Pops

video by Ferdinandh Cabrera

AFTER Father Fausto Tentorio was felled by the bullets of an assassin last October 17, people came from miles around Central Mindanao to pay their respects to the man who travelled halfway around the world to serve the people of North Cotabato.

Father Pops, as Tentorio was more commonly known among Cotabato folk, was an Italian missionary who had spent 33 of the 59 years of his life serving the poor of Cotabato. During those three decades, Father Pops made a name for himself as an environmentalist, a human rights defender, and a champion of the rights of the lumads or the highlanders. In particular, Fr. Pops was known as an anti-mining activist who objected to the exploitation of lumad lands by mining companies.

Last October 17, a man walked up to Father Pops at his convent garage in Arakan North Cotabato and pumped ten bullets into the missionary. The gunman fled in a motorcycle driven by an accomplice. He is the third missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) to be killed in the Philippines.

In this short video shot and edited by Cotabato multimedia journalist Ferdinandh Cabrera for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, ordinary parishioners, fellow priests, and members of indigenous groups travel from far away to pay their respects to a quiet Italian who, as it turns out, was more Filipino than many of us.