DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 03 December) – “The massacre during Sunday Mass is a crime that cries out to heaven,” Mindanao’s lone Cardinal, Orlando B. Quevedo, OMI, on Sunday said of “the most terrible and damnable terroristic act against innocent worshippers perpetrated on a Christian holy day.”
Quevedo said the blast during an early morning Catholic mass inside the Dimaporo Gymnasium of the Mindanao State University in Marawi City that left four persons dead and 42 others wounded “is a tragic re-enactment of the insane bombing of the Jolo Cathedral during Sunday Mass several years.”
Cardinal Orlando B. Quevedo, OMI, Archbishop of Cotabato. MindaNews file photo by TOTO LOZANO
“Voices will cry for revenge. But the law of Christ is not one of retaliation, but a law of love – love and pray for your enemies,” he said.
Quevedo was referring to the January 27, 2019 twin explosions at the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Jolo, Sulu that killed 21 persons and injured a hundred others.
On the Marawi blast, he called on law enforcement agencies “to ferret out the perpetrators of this most heinous crime and bring them to justice.
“For the victims and for their families, my deep personal condolences and prayers. Let peace begin in our hearts,” the former Archbishop of Cotabato, a key figure in the Bangsamoro peace process, said.
Early this year, Quevedo was named by Bangsamoro Chief Minister Ahod Balawag Ebrahim to be part of the 30-member Council of Leaders of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, representing “settler communities.”
Pope Francis named Quevedo as Mindanao’ first Cardinal in early 2014. Quevedo retired in November 2018 and is now Archbishop Emeritus of the archdiocese.
The 84-year old Quevedo was president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines from 1999 to 2003, one of the organizers of the Federation of Asian Bishops Conference.
Quevdo himself had celebrated a mass that was disrupted by a blast in a lechon house just across the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cotabato City on July 5, 2009, killing four persons and injuring 32 others. Among those killed was Prince Allen Diaz, the 12-year old grandson of the veteran journalist, Patricio Diaz, then a columnist of MindaNews.
The bomb exploded while Quevedo was finishing his homily.
“The explosion concluded my homily,” Quevedo said in an interview then, adding he did not see the actual explosion “but I could see the smoke and dust from across the street, as parishioners panicked, screamed and scampered to get closer to the altar.”
“Like firecrackers”
The first Sunday of Advent mass, celebrated by Fr. Benigno Flores Jr. of the Order of Franciscan Minor had just started when what initially seemed like firecrackers, exploded.
MindaNews sought Fr. Jun but as of 4:30 p.m. he could not be reached. His friends told MindaNews “Jun is safe and unharmed” and described the explosion as one that “sounded like firecrackers at first.”
The explosion happened “just after the Kyrie” where the mass-goers say “Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”
The Catholic church in Marawi City was among those destroyed during the Marawi Siege in 2017. Catholics constitute a minority in Muslim-dominated Marawi where the seeds of interfaith dialogue were sown.
There is no church inside the MSU campus.
Violeta Gloria, a graduate of MSU, explained that Catholic students “go to a tiny chapel for everyday Eucharistic prayer” but during Sundays, they hold mass in the gymnasium “except when it’s not available for use.” If the gym is not available, “they do Sunday morning praise” in the golf course.”
Fr. Teresito “Chito” Soganub, the Vicar-General of the Prelature of Marawi who was among those held hostage by the IS-inspired groups that laid siege on Marawi on May 23, 2017, was the long-time chaplain in MSU’s main campus in Marawi. He would celebrate Sunday mass in the golf course if the gym is not available. Soganub managed to escape after 117 days in captivity. He died in his sleep on July 22, 2020 in his hometown in Norala, South Cotabato.
Gloria said the Catholic Students Organization (CSO) is a very small community. “They are organized into ministries, so they know or are familiar with each other well. Unique to the rest of churches, the CSO practices the ethos of ‘dialogue of life and faith’ being immersed in interfaith and interreligious teachings to appreciate differences and uniqueness of cultures inside a predominantly Muslim community,” consistent with the Prelature of Marawi’s mission.
The seeds of interfaith dialogue were sown and nurtured here by the first Bishop of the Prelature of Marawi back in the early 1970s. It has since spread across Mindanao, the Philippines and parts of Asia. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews with a report from Ferdinandh B. Cabrera)
