VARIOUS Filipino Catholic Church groups and faithful have remembered the life and works of Redemptorist priest Rudy Romano who was forcibly disappeared in Cebu City exactly 37 years ago on Monday, July 11, 2022.
“I remember Father Rudy as a preacher of the word of God. He dedicated a large part of his pastoral work to the ministry of the Word. He was engaged in the rural missions ... I saw some of his missionary footprints in northern Mindanao, from Iligan to Gingoog,” said Bishop Emeritus Emmanuel Cabajar of Pagadian.
“July 11 comes and goes generally unnoticed. Except for the Redemptorist community and friends and colleagues of Father Rudy, the Catholic Philippines has seemingly forgotten the injustice committed against this man of the cloth who, like the Most Holy Redeemer, gave his life for the ransom of many,” said Damdaming Katoliko sa Teolohiya (DaKaTeo), also known as Catholic Theological Society of the Philippines, a professional association of Catholic theologians in the country.
“Poverty, injustice, human rights violations, absence of genuine peace — these were the very reasons why he linked arms with the wretched of the earth. In so doing, he earned the ire of the powers-that-be and was made to disappear,” it added.
Father Rudy, who would have been 81 years old this coming September 26, was allegedly disappeared during the reign of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos who declared Martial Law before he was ousted from power in 1986.
“If he were with us today, he would surely have the same or even stronger commitment to help the hungry farmers, poor workers, homeless urban poor and street children, who bear the brunt of the violent ‘war on drugs’ that is causing innumerable deaths of God’s little ones,” DaKaTeo said in a statement.
“His heart would have bled to see our present situation, which is worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. Certainly, he would have courageously pursued the same advocacy for the downtrodden,” it added.
According to the theological society, almost four decades since Romano’s disappearance, the Philippines is “far from the ‘New Heaven and the New Earth’ that Father Rudy dreamed for — a dream that, if fulfilled, he will never have the possibility to cherish.”
“After fruitless years of struggle to find him, it was felt that for the sake of his agonizing relatives and friends, a closure had to be made. Without proof of his death, the Redemptorists decided to celebrate a funeral Mass for him,” Bishop Cabajar said.
“The desaparecidos are nowhere to be found. Their loved ones continue to wait. Shamefully, the perpetrators roam free. And the scourge continues,” added the theological society.
The Filipino Catholic faithful maintained that memories of Father Rudy and of many other desaparecidos “should be kept alive.”
“The struggles of truth against lies, of memory against forgetting, of justice against impunity, in whatever concrete ways possible, will eventually lead to the realization of the famous Latin American slogan ‘Nunca más (Never again),’’’ DaKaTeo said.
In Tacloban City, Redemptorist priest Ferderiz Cantiller said he is not hopeful of finding Father Romano under the present administration of President Ferdinand Marcos, the son and namesake of the late strongman.
“We don’t expect anything new. Old wineskins, old wine,” said Cantiller, who is the Youth and local Vocation director of Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish in Tacloban.
Meanwhile, Protestant Pastor Irma Salvador Mepico also remembered that Father Romano’s disappearance happened during the dictatorship.
“He was abducted...because he was a strong advocate against the dictatorship and a defender of the poor and the oppressed,” Pastor Mepico told Catholic news site Licas.News. (SunStar Philippines)