They Too Mourned For Him
By: Father Roberto C. Layson OMI
Fr Jesus Reynaldo A. Roda OMI, ‘Father Rey’, expected it all along. But not the people of Tabawan, whom he had served for ten years before his brutal murder on 15 January at the hands of his abductors. One of Father Rey’s Muslim scholars described the immediate reaction of the local people: ‘It was as if a big bomb was dropped in our midst and we got the shock of our lives. The whole island mourned. Some lost their appetite. Some kids don’t want to go to school anymore’.