Catholic priests
perpetrated the three most “right-into-my-personal-face” experiences of racism
in my life.
Born in 1958 in the
Philippines of Filipino parents, I came to the USA with them when I was less
than a year old, and about ten years later I became a citizen of the USA. I entered my Benedictine monastery in
California in 1981.
1
Around 1985, after
learning that a Filipino Benedictine monk and priest had become the president
of the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy in Rome, I mentioned it to a white
priest here in California.
He smiled and
chuckled.
I told him it was no
joke.
Still smiling, he
said, “No.”
I spoke again to tell
him it was true.
His face turned angry,
and raising his voice he told me, “How did a FILIPINO get that?”
2
In Rome, 1988 to 1991,
I was a student at the international Benedictine theology school of Sant’
Anselmo.
I was a member there
of the chant “schola,” the small choir that leads the chant during the Mass and
the Divine Offices. On some occasion
outside the liturgy, someone complimented me on my voice.
A white European
priest heard it, turned and told me my voice did not match my skin color and racial features.
3
Still in Rome. A group of Europeans and I were speaking
about the so-called “Indians,” the aboriginal indigenous peoples of the
Americas. I mentioned that the native
peoples died quickly in great numbers because they had no resistance to the
diseases the Europeans brought. At that,
a white priest (from Spain that had colonized the Americas and the Philippines)
shouted me down with, “NO— YOU people gave US the diseases!”
Turn. Love. Repeat.
