Fr. Ben Escrupulo

When a priest dies, it is said, the Heavens weep for the loss of a care taker of souls.

Early Sunday morning, Fr. Benjamin E. Escrupulo, parish priest of Helvetia passed away. I saw the parishioners of Helvetia turn out in full force to mourn the passing of their beloved pastor.

For Ben Escrupulo is so well loved by all, including his fellow priests and the poor that he has so dearly loved and for whom he dedicated his life.

I have yet to see one who can excel Ben Escrupulo in his love for the priesthood. Many had gone to the mountains to join the rebel movement and got out of the priesthood. Not Ben. He went back to the ministry because it has been his commitment and more than a vocation, it has been his devotion and passion.

For Ben Escrupulo, beneath his seemingly row key demeanor and his humility is his own principles and convictions. He said once, that he was a priest and would die a priest.

* * *

I should know. It was in the early 60s and I was teaching in La Salle. His mother, a cousin of my mother, asked me to look for a sponsor for his seminary studies.

I asked if Ben really had the vocation. She said, ever since a small child, priesthood was his dream. He was the classmate of my CPA brother in Manila.

At that time, our chaplain at the Homesite was Fr. Vicente Pelobello and the spiritual adviser of our Christian Family Movement was Fr. Luis Jalandoni. Jalandoni, Pelobello, and Escrupulo ran to the mountain but only Escrupulo went back to the ministry.

I asked Louie Jalandoni if he could help. He said he wanted to meet Ben first. I told him Ben was a bright boy, valedictorian in his high school in Igbaras.

Louie, or was it his sister, sponsored Ben's seminary studies.

All these, Msgr. Josefino Iledan remembered when I met him when he officiated in a Mass at Helvetia Sunday afternoon for Ben.

* * *

Weeks before he went up the mountain, he met me and said, it was his conviction to stand up against Marcos and all the abuses of Martial Law.

I said, if that was his conviction, he should follow it. I told him I would pray for his safety.

Years later when he went down from the mountain and was fetched by Bishop Camilo Gregorio at Hervias, we met. He was sickly and had diabetes.

What are your plans? I asked him in the presence of his father and mother. He said, he would go back to the priesthood. That has been my life, he said.

At that time, I told myself, Ben is a priest through and through. His mind was focused on the priesthood. He could have gotten other jobs if he only wanted to. He chose to be back to the priesthood.

We never talked much about his activities in the rebellion except telling me life was hard because they had to keep on moving, fearful the military would catch up on them. They could be killed because they were also set to fight if cornered.

But he had no regrets because it was a conviction except that he was not able to send his brothers and sisters to college. I said, there was still time.

The last few months he did not show some ailments. The last time we were together was when I took him to Miranda in Pontevedra to say Mass on the 40th day after the death of my sister.

He told me he has been very happy with the cooperation his parishioners in Helvetia were giving him. And I found out last Sunday he has improved the church.

***

Years ago, I told him, I long wanted to write a novel but it was my thinking that it must be sold in the U.S. I wanted a description of the life of a Negros rebel. And it should be patterned in Ben's experience.

He agreed when I told him it would be a fiction about an American priest and a Filipino nun in the guerrilla. For an American audience, they want the hero should be American. I told him the two most popular books of Ernest Hemingway were "Farewell To Arms" and "For Whom The Bell Tolls?" They are novels of and about rebels and rebellion.

"Farewell To Arms" is a story of Frederick Henry, an American lieutenant in the Italian Army in World War I and Catherine Barkley, an English volunteer nurse.

Wounded in the drive to Trieste in the spring of 1917, Henry was hospitalized and met Catherine where love blossomed.

It is a beautiful, classic, ageless novel made popular into a movie. Remember Gary Cooper playing the role of Frederick Henry and Helen Hayes playing the role of Caherine Barkley?

***

I also asked myself if the novel should be patterned after Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" where an American volunteer Robert Jordan, again played by Gary Cooper joined the Loyalists against the Falangists in the Spanish Civil War of 1930s.

It's a torrid love scene between Jordan and a girl named Maria, played by Ingrid Bergman, victim of the brutal mistreatment by the henchmen of the Falangists.

While in "Farewell" scene starts from the Italian Army retreat from Caporetto, and the lovers' flight to Switzerland in a row boat during a stormy night in Lake Margiorre and the last hours of Catherine's life in a hospital in Lausanne where Catherine died at the birth of a stillborn son, the "Bell" novel has only a scene of seventy two hours.

The 72 hours was a synoptic love affair in a bridge they planned to blow up.

Jordan was hurt when his wounded horse falls upon him and was forced to shoot it out to the end.

"The Bell" has been accepted as the more powerful novel showing the conviction of Jordan believing his fight is of transcendent importance to the world saying, "If we can win here, we can win anywhere." It's here that the title of the book was taken when Jordan quoted poet John Donne not to ask for whom the bell tolls because it tools for thee.

Ben was too busy. He did not read the books. I don't have the literary genius of Hemingway but had the plan been pushed through I think Fr. Ben Escrupulo could have left a legacy.*

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