{"id":5172,"date":"2018-06-29T03:13:07","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5172"},"modified":"2018-06-29T03:13:07","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:13:07","slug":"priests-have-gun-will-say-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=5172","title":{"rendered":"Priests: \u2018have gun, will say mass\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\nCALAMBA CITY <\/ul>\n<p> \u2014 In just a matter of six months, three clergymen have been killed. That served as enough reason for some priests in Laguna province to acquire firearms to protect themselves against would-be assassins. Add to that the frustrated murder of a fourth priest in the same town. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Thousands of parishioners joined the funeral march for Fr. Richmond Nilo, 44, who was gunned down as he prepared to celebrate Mass on June 10 in Zaragoza town, in the province of Nueva Ecija. Fr. Nilo was the third priest killed since December. And yet, the Philippine National Police leadership said \u2018there is no cause for alarm\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>Before Fr. Nilo, Fr. Mark Ventura, 37, was shot dead after saying Mass in Gattaran town, Cagayan province on April 29. Fr. Marcelito Paez, 72, was ambushed by motorcycle-riding gunmen in Nueva Ecija on Dec. 5, 2017 and  Fr. Rey Urmeneta, 64, a former police chaplain, was shot and wounded. Motive for the shooting of the clergymen are still unknown.<\/p>\n<p>One Filipino priest who is availing himself of a .45-caliber pistol is encouraging other priests to secure firearms for self-defence. Another priest said he was \u201cOK\u201d with owning a .45-caliber or a 9mm pistol \u201cjust in case.\u201d A third priest was considering a gun of a higher calibre because, in his view, a .22-caliber pistol was only good for hunting birds and small animals.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyer Francisco dela Rosa, a parishioner from Calamba, said he supported arming priests for self-defense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf priest-killers can brazenly carry and use their illegal firearms to kill men of God, why can the priests not carry their legal firearms to defend themselves?\u201d Dela Rosa told media in a text message.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Church\u2019s stand <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the public affairs office of the Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference of the Philippines said the church hierarchy is against the arming of priests, but \u201cwe can\u2019t blame them\u201d if they believed it was the only way to protect themselves from unknown assailants.<br \/>\nHe said bishops may not sanction priests who arm themselves.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking about life here\u2014being in danger. If he sees that arming himself is the way to do it, let\u2019s respect him,\u201d Secillano said.<\/p>\n<p>However, he said there was a \u201cgreat possibility\u201d that priests who would \u201cpull the trigger first\u201d in case of an attack would \u201ccontribute to the violence that is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CALAMBA CITY \u2014 In just a matter of six months, three clergymen have been killed. That served as enough reason for some priests in Laguna province to acquire firearms to protect themselves against would-be assassins. Add to that the frustrated murder of a fourth priest in the same town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5173,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5172\/revisions\/5173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}