'He communicated best as priest.' Fr James B. Reuter SJ dies in Manila at 96

It's not every day that the death of a priest is marked by an editorial in a country's leading newspaper. But yesterday, 2 January, the Philippine Daily Inquirer carried one, Great soul, about an American Jesuit who had come here in 1938 as a scholastic and, with the exception of two or three years after World War II, spent the rest of his life here, Fr James B. Reuter SJ. He died peacefully on 31 December.

Father Jim was from Elizabeth, New Jersey, and was of German stock on his father's side and Irish on his mother's, a good combination of which he was proud. He was a pioneer in the use of the mass media in the Philippines in the service of the Gospel - radio, TV, the stage. I don't know if he ever got into IT but he had been quite sick for the last three or four years.

In either 1974 or 1974, when I was chaplain in the college department of Immaculate Conception College, Ozamiz City, then run by the Columban Sisters and now La Salle University, I invited him to give a workshop on radio drama to the members of the radio club I had started. I had a number of programmes on DXDD, the station of the Diocese of Ozamiz that had been started by a Columban priest, Fr Charles Nolan.

The first thing that surprised me when I met him at the airport was that he was wearing his cassock. That had been the universal dress of priests in the Philippines until the late 1960s. He was one of the few to continue the practice. The last time I met him, maybe four years ago at a Catholic Mass Media Awards ceremony, he was in a wheelchair. 

We spent the whole of each of the five days of the workshop in Ozamiz in the studios of DXDD and we learned by doing, under the direction of Father Jim. He had brought along five of his own 30-minute plays. As far as I recall, he directed three of the five plays and supervised two of us while we directed the last two. It was hard work but great fun. And we enjoyed listening to ourselves when the station broadcast our work.

During the Martial Law years Father Jim produced a four-page newsletter called The Communicator, which was widely distributed by the Catholic Church. It was published either weekly or monthly, I can't quite remember. He also encouraged rural communities to to write the news on blackboards. Almost everyone had access to radio but the media were controlled and news heavily censored or simply suppressed.

Eventually the authorities caught up with Father Reuter. Lai S. Reyes tells the story in the Philippine Star, the Manila daily for which Father Jim wrote a column, At 3AM, until 2009. Her article, In the Name of the Father - James Reuter SJ, was published on 28 July 2010.

The Communicator, The Hero

Unknown to the younger generation, Fr. Jim also played an important role in restoring our democracy. Through his Sunday radio program, The Commonweal Hour, and his magazine, The Communicator, Fr. Jim exposed the wrongdoings of the late dictator, President Ferdinand Marcos.

“There was one story I wrote, which blew his top. It was about the shoemaker in Manila who got killed because he didn’t give up the land (which he owned) that the government wanted,” Fr. Jim recalls.

The shoemaker’s story displeased the former president.

“As a dictator, Marcos thought he could do anything he pleased because he could easily get away with it. At that time, it was a crime to say or do anything hostile to the actions of Marcos,” Fr. Jim notes. The shoemaker was an ordinary man, but he eventually became a symbol of freedom.

The Xavier House in Sta. Ana, Manila, which served as Fr. Jim’s home and office, was raided by the military during Martial Law. They confiscated all the copies of The Communicator and eventually put the priest on house arrest.

Fr. Jim went on trial for eight days at Camp Crame, but the man behind his arrest got nervous and was afraid that the incident would be exposed to the international press. In no time, President Marcos gave Fr. Jim “amnesty.”

“They had 76 accusations against me. Amnesty means all the crimes you’ve been accused of have been forgotten by the defendant. But for Marcos, it meant otherwise. They told me that I was guilty, but they were not going to punish me yet. However, if I did something that would displease the dictator, they would put me in jail or deport me, or worst, shoot me,” recalls Fr. Jim.

That incident didn’t dampen Fr. Jim’s spirit. In fact, it further fueled his desire to fight back and put an end to the evil deeds of the oppressor. That day came when People Power broke out on EDSA in 1986.

“It was such a sweet victory not only for me but especially the Filipino people. My heart belongs to the Philippines. In fact, I’m more of a Filipino than an American. I even applied for a Filipino citizenship, but I was denied on grounds of being an ‘undesirable alien,’” he says with a laugh.

The long wait is over. In 2006, Fr. Jim was granted an honorary Filipino citizenship by the House of Representatives and the Senate. 

Father Reuter called his column, which he wrote for twenty years, At 3AM because that was the time he wrote it. He was unconventional in another way too. Most westerners in the Philippines take a siesta after lunch, which is usually at 12, but Father Jim used to come to the Columban house in Manila and swim in our pool at that time. He did this into his 80s.

Ma. Ceres P. Doyo of the Philippine Daily Inquirer recalls an interview in 1989 with Father Reuter in her weekly Human Face column today, Conversation with Fr. James Reuter SJ. She notes: 

Being the head of the Catholic Church’s National Office of Mass Media is only one of the many jobs of Father Reuter. But this office is the hub and heart of what the Jesuit padre is into. He writes, he directs plays, gives retreats and spiritual guidance. He is also an organizer, a mover. The youth is his forte.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial yesterday ended with these words:

Reuter’s pivotal role in Philippine history was prepared for in part by the high price he had to pay: He was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II, and he was silenced, arrested, tried then quietly released during the Marcos dictatorship.

To the thousands who came to work with Reuter, it was perhaps as a teaching priest, a shaper of conscience and character, that they knew him best. In a generous tribute occasioned by Reuter’s 90th birthday in 2006, Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the archbishop of Manila at that time, zeroed in on this particular gift.

“However, his finest hours as a communicator [are] when he is with people: with the many young people [who] went under his spiritual direction through retreats and recollections, the many nuns [whom] he directed and counseled, the many couples he guided, the many priests he walked with, the many poor he visited and assisted, the many bishops he served, the ordinary men and women who confessed to him, attended the Masses he presided, received his comfort and blessings. He communicated best as priest.”

On reflection, we can now see that the Reuter legacy was not so much the act of communicating (he excelled in many media), but the content of his communication (he had one constant message). Or to be more precise, and recalling the earliest Judeo-Christian traditions, his word was his work. It was all of a piece.

Two years ago, he paid his adopted countrymen the highest compliment: “When I first came here, I thought I was bringing God to the Philippines. But what I discovered was [the Filipinos] brought God to me.”

One little detail remains in my memory from the Ozamiz workshop. Irving Berlin's Blue Skies was to be sung by a young man to his girlfriend in one of the radio plays. However, none of the students knew the song, which I took to be a favourite of Father Jim, so we replaced it with a Filipino love song. When he went home to the USA a the end of the War he probably saw Bing Crosby sing Blue Skies in the 1946 movie of the same name.

For me as a priest it is a blessing to have known Father Jim, even briefly, and to know how faithfully and zealously he lived as a Jesuit priest among the Filipino people whom he loved. And what a lovely tribute by Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, then Archbishop of Manila, on the occasion of Father Jim's 90th birthday: He communicated best as priest. May he rest in peace.

An Advent Voice of Hope from Nazi Germany: Fr Alfred Delp SJ

Fr Alfred Delp SJ, 5 September 1907 - 2 February 1945

Stamp issued in West Germany 1964

I used to own a copy of The Prison Meditations of Alfred Delp SJ but lost it somewhere along the way while being transferred from one place to another. Jenny Howell, of the Center for Christian Ethics, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, writes her reflections on these writings here. She uses the title under which Father Delp's writings have been more recently published by Ignatius Press, Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings.



I was born in Ireland on Hitler's birthday in 1943, just two years before World War II ended. Though independent Ireland wasn't involved directly in that conflict I have often wondered how the profoundly anti-Christian and anti-human Nazism took hold in a country that produced so many great saints and creators of beauty such as Beethoven, led by a man from the country that gave birth to Haydn and Mozart. (I once met a man in rural Kentucky who grew up in a community where Catholics were still perceived by some as having horns and cloven hooves and where classical music was hardly ever heard and who became a Catholic through the beauty of the music of those two composers when he discovered they were Catholics.)

This morning I received this article by email from a Columban colleague. I think it makes good Advent reading.

Father Alfred Delp, S.J.

Advent — A Season to Find Hope Amid Despair In The World

By Joseph F. Pisani [Editor, The Advocate and Greenwich Time]

On Christmas Eve 1944, shortly before the Allies began their final assault on Nazi Germany, a young Jesuit sat in solitary confinement in a Berlin prison, preparing a sermon he would never deliver.

Father Alfred Delp, 37, was an outspoken critic of the Nazis, who had been arrested five months before for treason and complicity in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler by exploding a bomb in his meeting room. For nine weeks, the priest endured interrogation and torture at the hands of the Gestapo, torture which he said left him little more than a "bleeding whimper."

Despite this degradation, he had perennial hope — a hope even the Nazis could not destroy — which he expressed in sermons that his friends smuggled out of prison.

Many of these essays were composed during his four months of solitary confinement in a small cubicle, where the guards constantly kept the lights on to compound his torment. But the priest didn't seem to care; strangely, adversity only made him stronger, and his example inspired other prisoners.

Delp, who was the rector of Saint George Church in Munich, had been a leader in the resistance movement, and worked as a link in an underground system that helped Jews flee the country. He was arrested following the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler, even though he wasn't part of the plot.

Despite his circumstances, he looked forward to celebrating Christmas Mass in his cell, and saw Advent as a reason to be hopeful in a terrorized world. To him, the season had special meaning, and he wrote, "Our hearts must be keenly alert for opportunities in our own little corners of daily life. May we stand in this world, not as people in hiding but as those who help prepare the way for the Son of God."

He often reflected on the need for courage in a world that had forgotten the meaning of Christmas. Isn't the same true today? Almost 65 years later, atrocities are still being committed, and hearts grow cold in the relentless pursuit of power, profit and possessions. We live in an age characterized by greed and gross insensitivity to suffering.

Delp was one of those principled men and women who appear in every generation and confront the insanity of a world dark with despair, illuminating the way for the rest of us. His example ignited the ideals of his fellow prisoners, who, by any reckoning, had no reason to be hopeful. The source of his strength was a realization that the child in the manger was greater than all the tyrants and totalitarian regimes in history.

In his last meditation, composed on Christmas Eve, a month before he would be hanged for treason, Delp wrote, "How many types of people today could honestly appear at the manger? Most of them have absolutely no desire to do so. The small, scanty door does not let anyone riding a high horse get through. ... How much of what we are living through today cannot stand in the presence of the Child!"

Even though the Nazis pressured him to leave the Jesuits, he resisted, and professed his final vows shortly before his execution on February 2, 1945. Facing death, he was in good spirits and joked with his confessor that, "In half an hour, I'll know more than you do."

During his last days, Delp wrote: "Whoever is true to life, however hard and barren it may be, will discover in himself fountains of very real refreshment. The world will give him more than he ever imagined possible. ... his burdens will turn to blessings because he recognizes them as coming from God and welcomes them as such. Let us trust in life because we do not have to live through it alone. God is with us."

+++

Jenny Howell quotes Father Delp's initial reaction to his death sentence: “To be quite honest I don’t want to die, particularly now that I feel I could do more important work and deliver a new message about values that I have only just discovered and understood. But it has turned out otherwise.” Jenny Howell further quotes the priest, who made his final vows as a Jesuit in his prison cell (the Nazis offered him a reprieve if he left the Jesuits): “This is seed-time, not harvest. God sows the seed and some time or other he will do the reaping. The only thing I must do is to make sure the seed falls on fertile ground.May others at some future time find it possible to have a better and happier life because we died in this hour of trial.”
 
I recall from memory that Father Delp, who was ordained priest in 1937, wrote in his final letter, to his parents, I think, 'I die because I am a Jesuit'. As a priest I have always been inspired by those words.
 
Like another great martyr, St Thomas More, he was able to joke as he was about to be executed, saying to the prison chaplain, 'In half an hour, I'll know more than you do!'

'Greater Love: Richie Fernando SJ', a joy-filled Filipino missionary



I haven't been able to post for more than a week as I was giving an eight-day directed retreat to eight sisters of the Missionaries of Charity near Manila. While I had some access to the internet it was rather slow.

I had intended to make a post here on the murder of Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME, a 59-year-old Italian priest, in the Diocese of Kidapawan, Mindanao, on Monday 17 October. I will save that post for a later date. As I was looking for a video about Father Fausto I came across one about Brother Richard Michael 'Richie' Fernando SJ, a Filipino Jesuit scholastic who died while trying to prevent a troubled and disabled young man in Cambodia from throwing a grenade. That was in 1996 - on 17 October. Father Fausto gave his life exactly 15 years later.

I remember the mixture of sorrow and pride I felt when I read of the death of Brother Richie, pride as a missionary in the Philippines that a young Filipino seminarian had given his life so spontaneously in order to save the lives of others while on overseas mission, and sorrow that a young life had been cut short. Some months later in the Columban house in Manila I met an Irish Jesuit priest who had been in Richie's community in Cambodia. I shared my feeling of pride and sorrow with him but he could only share his grief at the tragic loss of a brother.

The video above is the first of a four-part production by Jesuits in Manila. At the end of each part you will find the link to the next.

I read somewhere very recently that joy should be even more characteristic of Christians than love. The two, of course, go together but we have the English expression 'as cold as charity' which comes out of the experience of a joyless Christianity, the kind you read about in the novels of Charles Dickens, for example. In everything I have read or heard about Brother Richie Fernando he has come across as a young man of loving faith filled with joy, a joy that is characteristic of the faith of so many Filipinos.

Fr Christopher F. Amoroso MSP, a young members of the Mission Society of the Philippines serving in Japan, wrote an article in the May-June 2011 issue of Misyon, the Columban online magazine I edit, Misyon and My Vocation, on how reading about Richie Fernando in our magazine led him to the priesthood.

Yesterday was Mission Sunday. Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME and Brother Richard Michael Fernando SJ are true faces of the missionary church.

Brother Richie Fernando SJ



Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME