NICK FLYNN

The Ethics of the Third Person

I am the man in the play- ground, the cord of his earbuds clenched in his teeth (bit in a horse’s mouth) so the mic’s closer to his voice, so his lover can hear him above the end- less screams. His daughter

(my daughter!) plays behind him, wild now on the monkey bars. Every- thing is as it should be. In a week he will travel to Florida & his lover will meet him there. She has heard his daughter grow up—two, three, four—

& she will even end up watching her, when it turns out he has no childcare in Florida— the two of them will build sandcastles

& collect shells while he works & that night his daughter will give him a drawing, all of them—wife, lover, daughter, him.

37 This story was produced in partnership with 38 the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Church vs. State Philippine president ’s brutal but popular war on drugs has forced the to ask itself a defining question: What is its responsibility under an immoral regime?

Reporting by Adam Willis Photographs by Eloisa Lopez

AUTHOR/DEPARTMENT NAME 39 40 VQR | SUMMER 2019 ne of the most famous victims— parish in southern , at various safe and the rare survivor—of Philippine pres- houses in the provinces surrounding the cap- Oident Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs is a ital—offering protection and guidance to a thirty-year-old pedicab driver named Fran- man who has fallen into a precarious position. cisco Santiago Jr. In September 2016, while Overnight, Santiago became a witness to police cycling through central Manila, Santiago was impunity in the war on drugs. He also became abducted by a Philippine National Police (PNP) an amplified target. When Santiago appeared officer posing as a passenger. Santiago’s name in a Manila courtroom last October, facing trial was not on the “kill list” of the PNP’s now- again for the illegal possession of a firearm (a infamous drug-sting operation known as Oplan charge refiled well after the sting), Jun was with Tokhang, or “Operation Knock and Plead,” but him, a buffer against the PNP officers stalking he had become a target nonetheless. After he the hallways outside the court, some of them was beaten in a PNP station for the better part the very same who had tried to kill him two of a day, Santiago was led back into the streets years earlier. that night and shot multiple times, suffering Occupying a vague space between activist, wounds to his chest and arms. Thinking him journalist, and minister, Jun is the ragged tip of dead, one officer approached Santiago and the spear in the Catholic Church’s resistance to placed a pistol next to his hand. Santiago waited, the war on drugs, a war which, despite being barely breathing as blood pooled around him, condemned by many international human- until he heard the hurried sounds of journalists rights organizations, is surprisingly popular arriving at the scene. He sat up, pleading for among Filipinos. As a of the Redempto- his life and waving his blood-soaked arms in rist order, he is not technically clergy. Jun lives surrender. By the next morning, local newspa- among the priests on the forested grounds of pers had already assigned Santiago a new name: Baclaran, but he operates outside the Catholic Lazarus, after the Israelite resurrected by Jesus hierarchy as a layman and often stands out from in the Gospel of John. the company he keeps. His black hair hangs After spending the next two years in jail for down to his shoulders. His uniform—a far cry myriad charges, including the illegal possession from the cassocks of his brethren—comprises of a firearm, Santiago found sanctuary with a a pair of rustic boots, cuffed jeans, and, on that missionary in the Redemptorist order of the day at the Manila trial court, a Nirvana T-shirt. Catholic Church named Jun Santiago, known I met Jun on my third day in the Philip- to most as Brother Jun. Just as Jun has done for pines and did not track him down again until countless families of drug-war victims, he began the eleventh, but in the days between, in con- sheltering Santiago—at Baclaran Church, his versations across the sprawl of , previous pages: Portraits of slain victims of the ADAM WILLIS 41 . Manila, November 2018. I kept hearing his name. His influence was Filipino priests have been killed under mysteri- everywhere, his roles so varied as to be almost ous circumstances. One was ambushed in his Zelig-like: from menial tasks, such as supplying car after negotiating the release of a political candles for protest marches, to diplomatic work, prisoner; another, while saying blessings on a such as appealing to eminent prelates for sol- group of children, was shot dead by a motorcy- idarity, to infinitely more dangerous missions clist a third was murdered at the altar in front of like patrolling Manila’s streets at night, racing parishioners just before Mass. In 2017 and 2018, to crime scenes in order to photograph the such violence against clergymen prompted more dead—hundreds over the last three years. In a than two hundred priests and religious leaders political climate where many fear the impulses to petition for licenses to carry firearms. of a violent president, Jun lives at risk on behalf When I asked Jun whether he was concerned of his church and thousands of Filipinos threat- for his own safety, he shook his head and drew a ened by Duterte’s war on drugs. Not yet forty, circle around his chair, as if tracing an invisible Jun’s friends joke that he’s already on the path ring of fire. to sainthood. “It’s part of our job,” he said. “Why be afraid?” In the , the church has emerged as the most prominent voice of dissent against There are three basic ways to die in Duterte’s a drug war that has claimed, by some esti- war on drugs. “Riding in tandem” has been the mates, more than twenty thousand lives. It is dominant mode in Manila: drive-by operations also under perpetual assault from a president conducted on motorcycle, with balaclava-clad intent on contesting the very essence of Phil- assassins—believed in some cases to be the ippine Catholicism. Having framed his 2015 PNP’s hired guns. Other executions take place campaign as a referendum on the legitimacy of through so-called “legitimate police operations” the church, Duterte has forced religious lead- carried out by large task forces, whether for a ers to choose between coveted political cap- group or just a single target. (It isn’t uncommon ital and their moral mandates. It is a familiar for the police to kill a drug suspect who was, dilemma, exacerbated by deep historical fissures according to witnesses, asleep when the raid between conservative and liberal clerics, and it occurred; in these cases, as with many others, has heightened pressure on the church’s most the police reports include a telltale phrase, nan- prominent prelates. In particular, Cardinal Luis laban: “They fought back.”) Other victims simply Antonio Tagle, the country’s most influential disappear. church authority, who splits his time between The logic of the drug war is cold and callously duties on behalf of the Vatican and leading transparent. Manila’s slums—Tondo, Navotas, packed services in the cathedral of — Caloocan, Pasay, Malabon—have become killing the Catholic heart of the Philippine capital—has fields. Police impunity is rampant and flagrant, been criticized by activists and clerics alike for compounding the horrors of extrajudicial kill- his deferential approach to dealing with Duter- ings. Fishermen have reportedly dumped bodies te. Such soft-pedaling, they argue, seems blind into Manila Bay at the orders of PNP officers. to the country’s suffering and risks degrading Women have been extorted for sex in exchange the moral integrity of the church. Meanwhile, for the safety of their male family members. Bod- Jun and a small crop of the church opposition ies have turned up on curbs and corners after have reoriented their lives around a mission to dark, their heads wrapped in packing tape to document the drug war while helping to seek disguise the defacements of torture, cardboard accountability for those responsible. messages draped around their necks: “Pusher In a country where vigilante executions have Ako” (“I’m a pusher”). Such theatrical touches become commonplace, this work is perilous at are common in the drug war’s crime scenes, best; Catholic leaders who speak out are often which often show signs of staging. The web- inundated with death threats, sometimes from site Rappler, the Philippines’s opposition news Duterte himself. In the last year and a half, three outlet, has noted how ziploc bags of shabu (the

42 VQR | SUMMER 2019 Brother Jun Santiago at a demonstration calling for “truth, justice, and peace.” Manila, January 2019. methamphetamine at the heart of the country’s percentage by spring. Caloocan bishop Pablo drug crackdown) turn up in the pockets of vic- “Ambo” David, the rare dissenter among the tims, so frequently and conveniently as to suggest Philippines’s bishop class, and perhaps the most they’d been planted. Nearly as often, a handgun— outspoken Duterte critic among the archipela- typically a rusted .38 caliber—rests beside the go’s clerical elite, worries about what he terms body, or in the victim’s nondominant hand. In “a death of conscience” within the Filipino some cases, and ominously, ambulances have people. Ambo expresses alarm that Duterte has arrived at a target’s home ahead of the police, already succeeded in corrupting “even a basic portending the violence to come. sense of good and bad” in the minds of so many Jun does not waver in calling this strategy “a Catholics “in making it so easy for people to systematic killing of the people.” Oplan Tokhang’s accept that these people deserve to die because targets are informally submitted to local baran- they’re drug suspects.” Recently, Ambo’s public gay offices—the smallest administrative districts dissent prompted a counter from Duterte: The in the Philippines—without vetting. Truth is president accused the bishop of stealing from peripheral, and according to Duterte’s moral the offering plate and dealing in drugs himself. code, the same punishment fits nearly every Duterte threatened to personally “decapitate” crime: Someone ten years sober is as eligible a Ambo, after which the bishop was overwhelmed candidate for proscription as any other. by death threats. Through such direct attacks, And yet for all the carnage, and as alarming Duterte has chipped away at a veneration of the as these tactics seem, Duterte remains broadly church half a millennium in the making. Priests popular. Before October of last year, the pres- themselves no longer know their standing in the ident’s approval ratings had hovered around culture. As Father Albert Alejo, a member of the 80 percent; after a short slump at the begin- Catholic resistance, put it to me, the crisis of ning of 2019, they rebounded to just shy of that the drug war transcends the death toll. “In the

ADAM WILLIS 43 In the Philippines, the church has emerged as the most prominent voice of dissent against a war on drugs that has claimed, by some estimates, more than twenty thousand lives.

end, they are not just killing bodies,” he said, “they are killing our logic, and they are killing our moral foundations.”

When Duterte launched his presidential cam- paign, in November 2015, he was a little-known mayor with a reputation for violence in the southern capital of Davao, where residents referred to him as the “Death Squad Mayor.” Six months later, his was the most famous face in the country, due mainly to a campaign that promised fantastical reforms to a frustrated and alienated electorate. “He promised them the moon and the stars,” one Catholic activist told me, with pledges to clear Manila traffic—some of the worst in the world—in just one hundred days, to weed out government and corporate corruption, and, in his banner program, to scrub the country of crime and poverty through an unforgiving war on drugs. Along with these bold promises, Duterte built his campaign on violent and blasphemous rhetoric that gave voters in an overwhelmingly Catholic coun- try (four in five Filipinos identify as Catholic) every possible reason to abandon him. His pub- lic appearances were marked by vulgarities and “Putang ina,” Duterte sneered. “Son of a whore, open threats: “If I make it to the presidential go home. Do not visit us again.” palace,” Duterte said in his last rally before the These attacks should have landed discor- election, “I will do just what I did as mayor. You dantly with Filipino voters, for whom Cathol- drug pushers, hold-up men, and do-nothings, icism is entwined with national identity. Here, you better go out. Because I’d kill you.” And Christian scripture saturates the landscape; rather than court the country’s religious lead- biblical antecedents abound. Prayer beads hang ers to take political advantage of their historical from countless rearview mirrors. Neon crosses popularity, he instead waged a relentless crusade cap barangay skylines. In the crowded networks against the Catholic Church, wielding its record of Manila’s vendor stalls—between sneakers and of sexual abuse as moral leverage and going so mangos and glass-bottled colas—passersby can far as to curse Pope Francis after his 2015 visit pick up all kinds of Catholic trinkets: glossy plas- to Manila, using the nightmarish traffic caused tic pietà statues, Crayola-colored votive candles, by the pope’s Mass to lodge a populist critique. floral and beaded , medallions stamped

44 VQR | SUMMER 2019 Catholic and students call for justice for victims of the war on drugs. Manila, January 2019. with the faces of saints. In the capital’s angled his hubris the mark of a political liberator. “We alleyways, chapels materialize out of stone and are tired of the technocrats—the elites—who sheet metal, nearly indistinguishable from the are well-dressed but actually they’re not in touch neighboring shanties, where homemade shrines with the people,” said Alejo, who is also a profes- glow in the windows. Against this profound sor of theology at Ateneo de Manila University. expression, Duterte’s rise has exposed a blind “This guy makes us laugh, he makes us cry, he spot in Philippine Catholicism: The same coun- cracks jokes, he curses the way we curse. And try that is adorned in the ornaments of faith also he is able to curse the United Nations, the US, remains broadly supportive of a misogynistic and even the pope? My God, this guy has guts.” and murderous demagogue. “We will be celebrating very soon five hun- Duterte somehow found an audience in the dred years of Christianity,” said Father Flavie country’s Catholic ranks, more so than any other Villanueva, an anti-drug-war activist, alluding candidate. For many, his anticlerical language to Spain’s arrival in the Philippines—and with simply reinforced an antiestablishment persona, it, Catholicism—in 1521. “But look at who voted

ADAM WILLIS 45 for Duterte and the people still supporting condemnations of a “culture of death”—vague Duterte. There are still so many Catholics on phrasing that encompasses abortion as well as that side.” What’s more, Duterte’s garish brand the drug war. His position is further muddied by of populism appealed to some clergy as well as the fact that he’s been photographed in genial laity. For Villanueva, the complicity is personal. meetings with Duterte, whom he has yet to con- “I voted for the asshole,” he told me. “But after demn by name. “Good luck trying to find him,” three months, I saw the killings.” I asked Vil- one church activist said of Tagle. “He is always lanueva why he supported Duterte in the first flying off to some country or other because he place. “Because I know that he had balls,” he is the head of Caritas International and also has said. “Perhaps that’s the radical side of me.” a number of important positions in the Vatican. As antagonistic as his rhetoric was during the And he hates having reporters corner him with campaign, Duterte’s hostility toward the church questions about the extrajudicial killings.” (Car- has only intensified during his presidency. In one dinal Tagle did not respond to multiple requests tirade earlier this year, he threatened to execute to be interviewed for this story.) priests who had sexually abused children. Sep- This dance has frustrated secular human- arately, he promised to kill a prominent bishop rights organizations who look to the church to who had simply criticized his administration. And take the lead on any number of urgent issues. in a speech at the presidential palace last Decem- “They were very slow. They were silent,” Phelim ber, Duterte called for violence against an entire Kine, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s class of church leaders: “These bishops that you Asia Division, said of the church’s response to guys have, kill them. They are useless fools.” As if Duterte’s drug war, describing “a long fallow testing the limits of his own blasphemy, Duterte period” before the Catholic Bishops’ Conference has aimed each curse at a Catholic dogma more of the Philippines, the voice of the Vatican in sacred than the last. Addressing Filipinos during the country, finally issued a formal statement a 2016 speech in Laos, he predicted a future in denouncing the killings. “In our view, silence which the Catholic Church would be irrelevant, to a certain extent is complicity here, given that and beckoned his countrymen into an “Iglesia ni what was going on was an egregious violation Duterte” (a “Church of Duterte”). On All Saints’ of some of the most basic Christian tenets,” said Day last year, as Filipinos flocked to cemeter- Kine, dismissing the response of the Philippine ies in the tens of thousands to pay respects to church as “perfunctory and minimalist.” Carlos departed loved ones, he mocked Catholic saints Conde, the lone Human Rights Watch represen- as hypocrites and loons—“We don’t even know tative based in the Philippines, expressed similar those saints, who those fools are, those drunk- frustrations. He believes that the church is “the ards”—and proposed himself as a proper object only institution that is left standing that can con- of worship: “Santo Rodrigo.” Last October, he front Duterte,” but he bemoans its opposition aimed even higher than the pope, calling God movement as “inconsistent” and “fragmented.” himself a “son of a whore” and asking, “Who is Tagle, he argues, is forsaking “a moral duty to this stupid God?” bring back the balance.” This stodgy response has nearly caused Conde to lose faith in the Duterte’s ascent has resurrected a dilemma church completely. “It is just a cop-out to say for the Philippines’s Catholic leadership that that the church is not political. Of course the mirrors an identity crisis the church writ large church is political,” Conde said. has faced throughout its history: What is the Proof can be found in recent history. In less responsibility of the church under an immoral than forty years, the Philippines has weathered regime? The institution’s elaborate machina- two major political revolutions and one coun- tions make it tricky to parse the actual stances terrevolution, each taking shape through mass and tactics of its leading figures. Cardinal Tagle, protests along the same stretch of Epifanio de los for one, rarely speaks publicly about the war on Santos Avenue, or EDSA, the perpetually clogged drugs, and when he does it is through broad twelve-lane highway that encircles Manila.

46 VQR | SUMMER 2019 The Philippine priesthood took sides in Philippines is more violent than it has ever been. all three of these popular uprisings, backing “Nothing has changed,” Villanueva said. “We’ve the successful revolutions of 1986 and 2001, gotten worse.” while opposing a failed counterrevolution later Undoubtedly, the Catholic leadership has that same year. The first and most famous of played a more cautious hand with Duterte than these was the , which some of its strident parish priests have. But, deposed the dictator and as Guadalupe Tuñón, an Academy Scholar at brought an end to more than a decade of martial Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for law. The church was instrumental in orchestrat- International Affairs who specializes in the ing the revolt. On February 21, 1986, Cardinal intersection of religion and politics, points out, Jaime Sin, who frequently denounced Marcos’s these shadow games may only reveal part of the repressive regime from the pulpit, went on story. “Whatever they are saying on the record national radio and called upon the Filipinos of is potentially less important than what they are Metro Manila to take to the streets in solidarity allowing in their dioceses,” says Tuñón. Tagle with a high-ranking military official who had himself may be quiet, but any dissidence in his parted ways with Marcos. Within hours, thou- archdiocese comes by his tacit permission. It sands of people were choking the lanes of EDSA is noteworthy, then, that one of the country’s and scaling its high-mast lampposts. Entire fam- handful of vocal bishops is the cardinal’s direct ilies came bearing drums, flags, and anti-Marcos subordinate, , the auxiliary banners. When Marcos’s tanks rolled onto the bishop of Manila. thoroughfare, they encountered a massive crowd Pabillo defends the tack of the cardinal, argu- of revolutionaries and nuns reciting the prayers ing that “there are different ways how you can of the . After four days of protests, during respond” to accomplish the same ends. None- which troops refused to comply with orders to theless, there is a dissonance between Tagle’s fire on the peaceful demonstrators, Marcos fled silent approach and Pabillo’s overarching phi- the country. (A “triumph of God in our time,” losophy of the church’s approach. “I don’t think Sin later called it.) Fifteen years later, in 2001, we have done enough,” Pabillo told me. “Among Sin directed the street protests that successfully the clergy and among the lay people, only a few brought an end to the corrupt tenure of Pres- are speaking out.” ident . Here again, the results When I asked him what would happen if the reinforced a narrative of divine intervention church led the kind of widespread protest that in Philippine politics. When counterdemon- he was advocating, he said, without qualifica- strations by supporters of the ousted president tion, “It would stop the killings.” gathered at a monument to People Power only a few months later, church officials deemed their At Eusebio Funeral Services, in northern protests a “desecration” of a “holy place.” Manila, Jun sat with Orly Fernandez, the funeral The legacy of the EDSA revolutions hangs home’s operations manager, in the open door- heavy over the modern-day Philippine church, way of the building’s garage, waiting for news. a radically different organization than the one of Jun spends many of his nights at Eusebio, one Sin’s time. “We don’t want anything to do with of the PNP’s “accredited” funeral homes, par- politics right now,” Villanueva told me, describ- lors whose business has boomed during the drug ing a church that has shied away from the expec- war thanks to such partnerships. When there is tations established by the former cardinal. Amid a killing, the police call an accredited funeral the uncertainty of the Duterte regime, many of home to retrieve the body. When Fernandez gets the clergy recall Sin’s tenure with bittersweet a call, he often tips off Jun, who speeds ahead nostalgia: On the one hand, Sin presided over a of the hearse in order to photograph the scene church with far-reaching influence on civil soci- before the body is removed. ety; on the other, the church’s political forays For nearly three years, Jun has dedicated his seem to have been in vain. Governance in the after-dark hours—between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.—

ADAM WILLIS 47 Mass at the Minor Basilica of the . Manila, October 2018.

Catholic priests Robert Reyes (left) and Flavie Villanueva (center) lead the funeral procession of seventeen-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos, who was shot and killed by police. Manila, August 2017.

to this ritual, part of his work with the night- media; and as an activist brother, rather than a crawlers, a group of semi-nocturnal Filipino priest, Jun has some agility within the Catholic journalists who cover the graveyard shift in Church’s rigid structure: Liberated from burden- the war on drugs. Made up primarily of photo- some clerical duties, he can dedicate himself to journalists, the nightcrawlers stake out the supporting victims’ families while documenting early morning hours in Manila, waiting for the killings. calls about drug-war killings. At the height of It was a slow night at Eusebio. Jun mentioned the war, three to five killings a night were rou- going to Bulacan, a province north of Manila tine. On one night in the summer of 2017, as where many of the killings were concentrated. part of what the PNP calls a “One Time, Big “You don’t need to go to the provinces,” Fernan- Time” operation, thirty-two people were killed dez told him. “There are enough killings here.” in less than twenty-four hours. Jun sees docu- Fernandez estimated that, just the week before, menting this violence—through photography he had recovered ten bodies in northern Manila. and the collection of police reports—as crucial While the group loitered on the curb outside to the anti-drug-war effort. The work of the the garage, Fernandez retrieved three printouts nightcrawlers has helped to draw international from inside and laid them out on his bench. attention to the atrocities of the war on drugs, The word missing was printed in large letters and they provide a crucial support network for across the top of each, with pictures of three the families of victims. Still, Jun is unusually faces below. This had become the norm: With situated between photographer and missionary, declining media coverage and wilier evasions by and this allows him advantages over his peers in the police, the dead tended to disappear. both journalism and the church. For one thing, After passing a few monotonous hours victims’ families are often more inclined to talk smoking cigarettes and eating ramen from a with a representative of the church than the nearby 7-Eleven, the handful of journalists on

50 VQR | SUMMER 2019 shift followed Jun to a nearby wake. As rigor- the crossroads of faith and politics in the Philip- ous reporting on killings has declined, wakes pine church. It is also a subtle harkening to the have become one of Jun’s primary venues for architect of that more politicized era. “He was gathering information, both to secure police not afraid to make a stand. He was not afraid to reports and to hear the families’ versions of take risks,” Father Robert Reyes, the most out- events. With Manila’s streets finally cleared spoken progressive priest in today’s Philippines, of traffic, they covered ground quickly. Just a said of Sin. “But now, there’s so much timidity, few minutes after leaving the funeral home, tepidity, reluctance, and compromise. People Jun stopped the car outside a one-room shack. don’t expect the church to say anything at all.” Inside, they found a woman sleeping across A minor celebrity in the Philippines, Reyes two folding chairs in front of an open casket. It is popularly known as the “Running Priest” was late, approaching one in the morning, but because he often embarks on long runs on behalf children, extended family members, and friends of various causes, once covering the length of of the departed were still there, playing cards the archipelago to commemorate the centen- outside the shanty. Philippine wakes can go on nial of the that overthrew for a week or longer, and gambling is a common Spanish rule. He is a lightning rod of the church, way to pass the time, with the winnings going a fixture on the front lines of marches who occa- toward the vigil costs. sionally stages protests as a lone wolf. His recent Jun fell into friendly conversation with the assignment to a parish in Manila’s Quezon City sister and mother of the victim, a man named came as a surprise to many in the Catholic com- Victor dela Cruz, and soon won the trust of the munity. A few days before I met him, a story mourning women: Within minutes they were went viral on Philippine social media that Pope laughing at his jokes, and after a short conversa- Francis had excommunicated “the renegade tion they handed him the PNP papers from the priest” for his political dissent. The story was a dela Cruz killing. The police report stated that hoax, but its traction spoke to Reyes’s notorious a teenage girl (“resident of Block 3, Squatters reputation in the church establishment. Area”) had reported a shooting in Navotas a few On multiple occasions, Reyes has pleaded nights before. An unidentified gunman shot dela publicly for Tagle, whom he calls a friend, to Cruz twice, once in the shoulder and once in the denounce Duterte. “Cardinal Tagle is very care- arm. On dela Cruz’s body, the report added, the ful,” Reyes said in an emotional protest march police recovered a “heat sealed transparent plas- last year. “A prophet is not careful.” Although tic sachet containing white crystalline substance Reyes acknowledges that the church has believe [sic] to be ‘shabu.’” expressed a moral opposition to the drug-war Jun pocketed the papers and went home for killings, he laments the ambiguous leadership of the night. the cardinal. “Everything is hierarchical in the Catholic Church, so you avoid saying or doing Three years after the People Power Revolu- something that does not have clear approval tion toppled Ferdinand Marcos, the Catholic from the Vatican,” Reyes said. He believes that Church erected a bronze statue of the Virgin Tagle has papal ambitions of his own and, as a Mary to memorialize what it saw as God’s hand result, walks a careful line. But without a clear in bringing an end to dictatorship. The Shrine voice at the top, Reyes argues that the Catholic of Mary, Queen of Peace, or Our Lady of EDSA, Church lacks the authority, cogency, and moral as she’s commonly called, presides over a grid- fire that the Philippine crisis demands: “The locked junction where EDSA meets a network voices are so disparate, so far apart, so far away of trans-Manilan highways and flyover roads. from each other. You don’t have a sense that Her palms stretch wide to the beltway, one there’s a collective voice.” lifted softly skyward in a blessing of peace. Reyes is so unyielding in his political activ- The monument, atop Cardinal Sin’s shrine to ism that his friends feign surprise that he is still the first EDSA Revolution, stands in memory to alive. Last year, Father Villanueva was traveling

ADAM WILLIS 51 abroad when he got a call from a journalist alert- Alejo had heard rumors of Mayor Duterte’s ing him that a priest had been killed in the Phil- death squad. When Duterte began campaign- ippines. “Who, Robert?” Villanueva shouted into ing for president, Alejo took in a pair of whistle- the phone. The journalist assured him that Reyes blowers from Davao who had come forward to was alive and safe. “But why not Robert!?” Vil- testify to the popular candidate’s history of vio- lanueva insisted. He often prods Reyes: “There’s lence. Citing a religious awakening, one of them, nothing happening these days. We need a cata- a man named Edgar Matobato, claimed to have lyst. Why don’t you have yourself shot in the leg? killed more than fifty people under Duterte’s Or in the arm?” orders (in one case, feeding a man’s body to a Villanueva jokes about the dangers posed to crocodile). Once Duterte was elected, Matobato his friend, but he’s certainly justified for the gen- became the Philippines’s public enemy number uine concern that’s embedded in his ribbing— one. No longer safe in the government’s witness- and has good reason to worry not just for Reyes’s protection program, he was quietly shifted out safety, but for his own. Together with Albert just before the transfer of power, landing in Alejo, the three compose a distinct trio of stri- the church’s underground sanctuary network. dent political dissidents in the church’s grass- Matobato changed hands several times before roots efforts, and all three have reason to believe eventually coming into Alejo’s care. “It’s kind of they are targets of the administration. When I an informal thing,” Alejo said of the sanctuary met Villanueva at a homeless shelter he runs in movement. “You don’t say, ‘It’s the church.’ But northern Manila, he had just sold his car because church people are very much involved.” he no longer felt safe driving alone. Sitting beside These days, Reyes, Villanueva, and Alejo are a pile of rice bags in his narrow office, dressed careful not to be in the same place at the same in sandals and a jersey that read, in rainbow let- time. But in a rare display this March, the trio tering, team jesus, 7, and was • is • is to come, held a press conference to publicly disclose the Villanueva explained how his public opposi- death threats they had long kept to themselves. tion to Duterte landed him on a government- In doing so, they sought both to ensure their surveillance list. He recounted how, on several own personal protection through public aware- occasions, mysterious men would appear at the ness and expose the dire straits of the church’s shelter and ask for his whereabouts, inquiring activists. “This is the best protection that we’ve into his daily routine. During our conversation, ever had,” Villanueva explained of their deci- a man appeared in the shelter’s open doorway, sion to go public. In this way, church superiors and he and Villanueva exchanged a few words were as much a target audience as the pres- in Tagalog. “He’s my driver, even if he looks like ident himself. After being privately alerted to a beneficiary,” Villanueva joked. “He’s brave— the threats against his parish priests, Tagle, who because he knows what I do.” The last driver, was in Rome at the time, sent a text message to Villanueva explained, quit after witnessing a one of Duterte’s aides, read aloud by the presi- Mass that Villanueva delivered for a dead priest. dent at a press conference in February: “Good “The driver saw me in my homily, how I con- day po. Greetings from Rome. I was informed demned the government. The following day he that … some priests got death threats from some- sends me a message: ‘Father, what you’re doing one claiming to be working for the President’s is scary, so I don’t think I can continue.’ But this family … Just to let you know, baka may naninira guy’s better.” [someone might be trying to destroy your repu- Though he has been considerably less visi- tation]. Thanks. We pray.” Villanueva vented: “If ble than either of his counterparts, Alejo, too, that doesn’t sound diplomatic, I wouldn’t know receives regular, credible threats, and has lately what is diplomatic.” kept to the campus of Ateneo de Manila Uni- By coming forward with their death threats, versity, where he teaches, doing his best to stay Villanueva said, he, Reyes, and Alejo hoped to out of the news. Still, his resistance bona fides be a spur “for the church, for the hierarchy, to are unimpeachable. While stationed in Davao, finally recognize that diplomacy apparently is

52 VQR | SUMMER 2019 As antagonistic as Duterte’s rhetoric was during the campaign, his hostility toward the church has only intensified during his presidency. As if testing the limits of his own blasphemy, he has aimed each curse at a Catholic dogma more sacred than the last.

not working with this government.” It’s a hope toll of the drug war in Cebu, however, proved that stems from the conviction that the Catholic more challenging than in the familiar streets of Church may yet drive a social reformation in Manila. Despite the vastness of the Philippine the Philippines. If the church mobilized all of capital and the intricacy of its slums, years on its resources against the war on drugs, if Tagle the night shift have accustomed Jun to the city’s followed the lead of some of the lower-ranking confused pathways and geographic eccentrici- clergy, “The problem is over in a day,” Reyes ties. Cebu, on the other hand, was unfamiliar said. But even Reyes wavered when pressed on territory. whether the Catholic Church still possesses the The arrival of the drug war in Cebu marred secular influence it had during the revolutions of one of the Philippines’s most picturesque Cardinal Sin’s time. “Right now, can the church islands, and also one of the most important in do that?” Reyes said. “I really don’t know. I’m the country’s Christian tradition. Located in scared to admit that. If the church continues this the central region of the archipelago, where the way, when it tries to mobilize people … she will islands shrink and scatter over the Pacific, Cebu sound like the little boy who cried wolf. It may is known as the the cradle of Catholicism in the be too late.” Philippines. In 1521, Magellan, sailing under the Spanish crown, became the first European to set Not long after our night at Eusebio, I was foot in the Philippines when his fleet landed standing with Jun outside yet another funeral in Visayas. In Cebu, the Spaniards ingratiated home, this one in Cebu City, the largest city in themselves with the king and converted him to the Visayas region of the Philippines. Late last Catholicism. But a rival ruler, Lapu-Lapu, chief summer, as the intensity of the drug war sub- of the nearby island of Mactan (home, today, sided in the capital, drug-related killings spiked to Cebu City’s airport), was less tolerant. It was in Cebu. And whereas the Catholic Church of on Mactan that Magellan was killed in battle as Manila had grown accustomed to the war on he attempted to forcibly convert Lapu-Lapu to drugs, its tricks and its formulas, the diocese in Christianity. Though Magellan died, the Span- Cebu was caught flat-footed. A small congress iards kept coming, eventually colonizing the rest of Catholics —Villanueva, two representatives of the archipelago and establishing Catholicism of the ecumenical activist group Rise Up, and as its national faith. two other journalists—had traveled here to The rise in drug-related killings in Cebu had meet with Jose Palma, the of Cebu. followed the transfer of three notorious PNP Palma was in high demand at the time: Many of officers to Cebu: Royina Garma, Debold Sinas, Manila’s grassroots Catholic activists were eager and Lito Patay. Garma, a fixture of the PNP and a for face time with him following the surge in favorite of the president since his days as mayor killings in his province. of Davao, now served as Cebu City’s police chief, This was not Jun’s first trip to Cebu since the with promises to implement the “Davao tem- outbreak of killings there. He had been traveling plate” in her new post. Sinas, meanwhile, was back and forth between the capital and Cebu, appointed chief of the PNP for the entire Central running the night shift on the Visayan island Visayas region. Patay, who had been chief of a just as he had in Manila. Tracking the death squadron of officers that followed Duterte from

ADAM WILLIS 53 A candle is left where Alvin Jhon Mendoza, twenty-three, was killed by riding-in-tandem gunmen while eating at a canteen near his home. Manila, October 2016.

Davao to Manila after the 2016 election (calling Palma mostly fell back on platitudes—“Killing themselves “The Davao Boys,” they were one of is not the answer,” and, “We have God”—and the deadliest outfits of the PNP during the first he all but recycled these again when pressed two years of the drug war), had taken over the for his thoughts about the practices of the local Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in police. More troubling was the fact that he Visayas, based in Cebu. seemed to take the PNP’s official statements “Follow the police officers,” Jun told me when regarding the killings at face value. At the end we first met, explaining that you could pretty of the meeting, each member of the group accurately predict where the next rash of killings appealed to Palma with their own suggestions would break out by tracking where certain PNP for the church’s response. Delicately bypassing officers and units were transferred: “Just follow the formalities of church protocol, Jun directly them and there will be killings.” Near the end implored the bishop to examine the situation of summer 2018, a few months after the per- with greater skepticism. “The pattern they were sonnel shuffle that brought Garma, Sinas, and using in Manila, they just brought it here,” he Patay together, drug-related killings began to insisted. “Even Colonel Garma, she was there climb in Cebu. Then, on the night of October in Manila during the ‘One Time, Big Time’ … It’s 3 and morning of October 4, the local PNP ran so blatant.” the “One Time, Big Time” operation, leaving Palma nodded agreeably, then mentioned a fourteen dead. local clerical coalition that he hoped could “be So the stakes were high for the activists who a factor in digging up many of these things.” He had traveled to Cebu to see the archbishop. turned down an invitation from another activ- But for all of the anticipation leading up to the ist to speak at an upcoming protest due to his Palma meeting, little came of it. Though he schedule. Soon we wrapped up the meeting. had been outspoken about the war on drugs, Palma would fly to Rome the next day.

54 VQR | SUMMER 2019 Outside of the archbishop’s palace, Jun was experience, expressed through the touching of frustrated that Palma hadn’t seemed to grasp images, the chants of the rosary, through kneel- the farce of PNP operations—their cruelty, their ing in silent and independent prayer: “That’s gravity, and the formula. Much like the bish- between me, myself, and my God.” Reason, on ops of Metro Manila at the dawn of Duterte’s the other hand, “That’s the human relationship.” presidency, Palma appeared to be stalling in his It is according to this more material sense that response to the killings. Jun feels compelled to chase leads in places But for all of his discontent with the church’s like Cebu, to shelter victims and their families, staid response, Jun knows he cannot hold the to spend his nights dashing through Manila’s rest of the hierarchy to the same standard that streets, counting bodies. he holds himself. “I’m so judgmental,” he sighed. On our last evening in Cebu, Brother Jun “This is their territory. This is their responsi- drove the party up into the mountains behind bility. You have to respect the other parishes.” Cebu City, to the site of a recent massacre. A few In this way, the byzantine order of the Catholic hours before sunrise on October 4, 2018, the Church chafes against its own activism, both night of the “One Time, Big Time” operation in moral and political. One bishop cannot weigh Cebu, seven people were abducted and taken, in on the concerns of another bishop’s diocese in two separate vans, to an abandoned farmer’s without express permission from the second road. We followed the same road the vans had bishop. The same goes for priests and their par- taken through the phosphorescent hills. The sky ishes. In all of Catholicism’s uniformity of rite, was blue over the city, but low clouds threatened dogma, and creed, this structure can make soli- rain in the mountains. When we reached the site, darity across church, diocese, and parish difficult a brick path eroding over a ledge that gives way to to achieve: Protests are scattered throughout the the valley, Jun pantomimed the executions, pac- establishment instead of being unified behind ing and gesticulating across the vista to describe the will of a common God. “They’re doing what- how five people were murdered and how two ever capacity they have,” Jun said. escaped. He looked out, past the end of the bro- Jun’s very presence in Cebu is a kind of sub- ken road and beyond the ravine, where a small version of the hierarchy: far beyond the limits wooden cross still memorialized the massacre. of his own parish and educating an archbishop Below: the fraught, five-hundred-year-old origins on the atrocities of his archdiocese. Still, Jun of Philippine Catholicism. “I am a Filipino. First insisted he was propelled to Cebu not out of the things first,” he told me later. “The religious iden- obligations of a religious missionary, but out of a tity is just an offshoot of being a Filipino.” duty to his country. “I am here not as a Redemp- We drove back into the valley to a Redemp- torist,” he said. “I am here as a journalist and as a torist retreat house on the outskirts of town Filipino. Personally, my vocation is not bounded where, the next day, Jun would present to Cath- by my religious affiliation.” For all of his vows, olic leaders on the atrocities he had witnessed. Jun’s Catholicism is unmoored from the institu- He wanted to prepare, so, finding a seat in a tional church—a blurring at the border of his quiet corner, he pulled up a slideshow on his religion and nationalism. computer. Photographs of the drug war’s dead “There are two mindsets: a dichotomy of faded in and out on the screen. With each new faith and reason here in the Philippines,” Jun image, Jun recited a place and a name. Down said, describing a paradox of Philippine Cathol- the hall, muffled small talk mixed with the hum icism that he suggests has allowed things to of cicadas in the trees. Night had long since drift so far from the church’s moral vision. Phil- fallen, the stars winking like tea lights behind ippine faith, he says, is an exclusively personal the incoming clouds.

ADAM WILLIS 55