Written February 2020 while visiting family and friends in the Philippines.
I had just heard that Bong was dead. He did not die simply, he was shot. At close range. In a supposedly secure house. An assassination. The military will not release his body until someone authoritatively identifies him as Bong Bellen of Bacacay in the Province of Albay with a two-million-peso bounty on his head. Bong. Aka Alponso. Aka Romano. Only then will the two-million-peso bounty be paid to the informer.
I sat for some time in silence at the back of the Baclaran Novena Church. A huge church but given to quietness, a serene space. There was no service, yet there were more people inside this church at 4pm on Thursday afternoon than you might find in the Sydney Cathedral during a Sunday morning service complete with a Cardinal. Each and all of these people with their own thoughts and prayers, silent pleas to their God and His Mother Mary. I wondered at the vast range of their needs and petitions. Were some also mourning the sudden violent death of a family member? Or were their pleadings for something simpler: to pass the Board Exam or be successful in applying for a visa to work in Australia?
A lady “walks” the 100-metre-long aisle of the church on her knees, a form of penance-prayer that the lady believes will be more efficacious, showing the Lord of her belief the seriousness of her request. Is she praying for the life of her child or that her husband be faithful while working in Saudi?
I sensed that if I stood, faced these people and told them I was crying inside over the death of a man I once knew, that I would not be a stranger to them. They would gladly help me carry my burden to the God that perhaps Bong no longer called “Father”.
Outside the Church there is also a good space – a rare treasure in urban Manila – with plants, trees and little walks, small nooks where the tired can rest and friends huddle or cuddle. Along the lengthy high side wall there is a continuous mosaic speaking of Philippine history, comprised of hundreds of thousands of small coloured ceramic pieces, punctuated with arms reaching out and up and down: telling of a people searching and struggling over centuries, fighting, grieving over battles fought and lives lost. This, the dedicated work of many that has taken years to complete, speaks also of Bong’s life, dreams and options taken.
It is more than thirty years since Bong and I met and spoke. Our lives diverged, contact was lost, and I only heard of his options from others. The same way that I heard of his recent death.
So many years ago, while working as a missionary priest in the Bicol region of the Philippines, I recruited Bong – a teenager then – to join the Redemptorist Congregation, a world-wide Catholic Missionary society founded by Italian Alphonsus de Ligouri to work for the poor and most abandoned. I met with his parents and encouraged them to allow their son to join our formation program in Manila. As it happened, I was soon re-assigned from mission work in Bicol to be director of the formation program in Manila. Hence our lives were connected.
The spirituality we espoused was to be grounded in a concrete experience of the life of the poor and abandoned in the Philippines: farmers, fishermen, urban poor (squatters), factory workers and so on. The experience undertaken by Bong was among people who were certainly struggling under a singularly oppressive Martial Law regime. At the same time, they were organising and unifying in their search for a measure of justice and equity. Except for a handful of committed leaders, the church as institution did nothing to support the struggle of millions in the Philippines who chose to take responsibility for their lives and march for a change of structures.
One of that handful of church people committed to the struggle of the poor was Filipino Redemptorist Rudy Romano, based in Cebu. On a particular July day in 1985 Rudy was kidnapped by unknown men. His body has never been found, no person or group has been held accountable for his disappearance.
The National Democratic Front intervened to lead this mass movement. It was supported in the countryside by an armed wing, the New Peoples Army (NPA). Bong chose to join the NPA and went up “into the hills” to fight for the liberation of his homeland. By that time, I had returned to Australia.
My reflection is not a treatise on ideologies and methods of social change. It is a taking note of the life of one man who formed his options and carried them out with a commitment that is quite confronting.
When I joined the Redemptorists I surrendered the option of marriage and family even though I eventually did regain that option and had to leave the Redemptorists as consequence. Otherwise I had great financial and physical security whilst owning nothing personally. This life opened up for me a wealth of experience and interaction with a vast array of peoples; however, the deepest gift I gained was to be able to enter into the life of people living a threatened existence at a level or depth that I could not have imagined would be possible. This experience challenged everything I believed about God, mission, life and suffering. It was the people in suffering who took responsibility for their lives who taught me about Jesus of Nazareth.
When Bong chose to go up into the hills he surrendered so much. He surrendered a future that others his own age would enjoy; he surrendered financial and physical security as well as opportunities for his children. He lived out his commitment to the Filipino people in a way he believed in.
What is extraordinary for me is that he stayed faithful to that commitment for some thirty years while many of his comrades “came back down” to regain their former lives. It is worth trying to imagine the sort of life he lived, always on the move, always a target, hunted by the military, living a life of strategy.
In the time my life was connected to the life of Bong in the formation program, a mantra was developed by our community, a poetic way of expressing the heart and mind of Jesus:
- Absolute selflessness
- Unbounded sense of responsibility
- Resoluteness unto death.
In a concrete way, for me, Bong lived out that mantra.
His life was that of a disciple, uncluttered and simple, according to his commitment to his people. Unto death.
It is not known by me if his commitment was an expression of his Christian faith or a repudiation of the same. What I do know is that among his pseudonyms were the names Alfonso as well as Romano. This indicates a consistent connection with the Redemptorists where he began his journey.
Bong was and will be judged harshly by many. Judging others is a dangerous adventure unless you have walked in that person’s shoes. He may not be a hero for me, but I put these words on paper as a means of saluting and honouring him.
