MISSIONARY BISHOP OF MINDORO: SERVANT OF GOD
©josemariobautistamaximiano
1. WE give thanks to God for giving the Filipino nation saintly Spanish missionaries, priests and bishops, like the first Philippine bishop in the person of Domingo de Salazar,OP, champion of social justice and defender of Filipinos against the abuses of the Spanish colonial system.
2. Today we remember Bishop William Finnemann, SVD, (1882-1942) of Mindoro, a German missionary bishop who decided to become a naturalized Filipino.
3. Rome has recognized that he was an outstanding Catholic shepherd who laid “down his life for his sheep” and declared him a SERVANT OF GOD on December 7, 1999.
4. As a young priest, his preference was different: He longed to be assigned as a missionary among the black indigenous people of Africa. He was quite frustrated when the Divine Word Mission sent him to the brown Filipinos instead. In 1912, he told his brother, “I have now become fully aware of the blessing of obedience.”
5. Der Segen des Gehorsams ist mir jetzt einmal richtig bewußt geworden...
6. “Determining the mission to Abra, the poorest province in the Philippines, was a hard blow for me. It was only when I became interested in the country and its people that I found that I hadn't made a bad exchange. I couldn't imagine a more suitable field of work for me today.”
7. As the highest Church officer in Mindoro, he was forthright, outspoken, and fearless in publicly denouncing the Japanese violation of human rights and the sequestration of church properties.
8. As expected, his condemnation of viciousness and injustice done by the foreign invaders made him closer to his flock but distant from the Japanese favor.
9. In fact, as soon as the Japanese Military Administration in Manila regarded him as “a real threat,” they arrested him without warning, imprisoned, and tormented him without end.
10. They returned him to the Bishop’s house in Mindoro, but only for a while. On October 26, 1942, he was marked a target and arrested again.
11. With an inkling that it could be his last sailing trip, the bishop turned down an escape plan as proposed by his clergy and lay leaders, saying, “If the shepherd flees, who should stand still?”
12. The bishop’s martyrdom was narrated by Pedro Raagas of Naujan, a former seminarian in the diocesan seminary of Calbayog.
13. On his trip back to the military court in Manila, the Japanese soldier in that military boar tied a large rock to the Bishop’s hands and a large heavy iron rod to his feet.
14. About 20 kilometers from Calapan, somewhere between Batangas and Verde Island, the commanding officer made an order and shouted in Nippongo, and they threw the good bishop overboard – never to be seen again.
JESUS: “Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
