These were the words that landed Fr. Robert Reyes, parish priest at the University of the Philippines, in jail Monday. And yet the 47-year old outspoken priest remains unrepentant.
Yesterday, he went into a fast inside the cramped quarters at the Quezon City Jail to show his defiance. He’s spending another night behind bars to practice what he said was his version of "incarnational theology" or living out his faith in the context of his four-year old ministry among jail inmates.
"Now I am truly one of them. It used to be that I would hold masses for them," he said. "Now I have become their kakosa."
Assistant City Prosecutor Rossana Morales-Montojo filed last May 16 a libel charge against Reyes in connection with the statement he uttered during the television talk show "Extra, Extra" on GMA-7 last Nov. 20, 2000.
Reyes was then being interviewed by TV host Paolo Bediones about the yet unresolved case of his nephew Ernest Robert Lucas, who was shot dead on Sept. 21, 1975 while attending a soiree at the San Lorenzo Village in Makati City organized by Ateneo and St. Scholastica students.
Jackie Enrile, then an Ateneo de Manila student, had been linked to the shooting of Lucas, a student from Letran.
Reyes was then a 20-year old first-year seminary student. The prosecutor dropped the charges against Bediones, reasoning that he was merely narrating the allegations made by the priest. The libel charge against Fr. Reyes came with a P2-million claim for moral damages.
"I grew up with my nephew, you see," he said. "It was a painful experience that continues to burn in my memory."
Twenty seven years later, his nephew’s family is nowhere to be found, having chosen to leave the country in silence a long time ago.
The judge who heard the case as well as the defense and prosecution lawyers, have likewise disappeared, he said.
Quezon City Judge Henry Pizarro will hear the libel case leveled by the former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and his son, Jackie, now a Cagayan representative, against Reyes.
Today, Reyes’ parishioners are bailing him out so he can attend to his dissertation defense for a PhD in anthropology at the University of the Philippines on Friday.