Activists mourn death of prelate
Sunday evening (June 1, 2014), I read a post in FB announcing the passing away of His Eminence, the Most Rev. Tomas Amahan Millamena, DD, the 10th Obispo Maximo of the Iglesia Filipino Independiente.
I knew little of him other than his reputation for giving church resources to promote social justice, his advocacy to join the people’s movement against oppression and exploitation, and in upholding the country’s sovereignty against US imperialist control.
Even in his last days, he involved himself with vendors of the Iloilo City Central Market who were up in arms against its privatization by SM, a company known for its greed for profits and for mistreating its workers through its one-sided practice of contractualization and paying them starvation wags. On that issue, he also took side with consumers as the privatization of the public market will jack prices of goods sold there.
Even in his last days at the hospital, he continued to contact via text messaging Elmer Forro, one of organizer of the vendors. He asked for updates and informed the latter he was at the hospital. Their last exchange, Sunday morning, Forro told him they would visit him at Don Benito Hospital but he told them to spend their tight schedule with the market vendors. That was the last exchange.
Former Rep. Siegfred Deduro (Bayan partylist) spokesperson of Makabayan, aggrupation of militant partylists in Congress, calls Millamena, 67, a “martyr”.
“We are used to the thought that ‘martyr’ refers only to those who met violent deaths for the cause they believed in,” Deduro notes. “Bishop Millamena is a martyr: he spent his life advocating for the rights of poor and oppressed people up to his last breath.”
Millamena, Deduro told me on the side, was liberal with alcohol in his seminary days. Although he toned down his appetite for it in his latter years, the habit damaged his liver leading to cirrhosis.
He is married to Leticia Javier Alpas and is blessed with three children – Faith, Dakila and Hope.
On Friday, June 6, 2014, his remains will be transported to his home – Brgy. Millamena, Sibalom, Antique.
(NB: The necro was brief. We had to end by 4:30 pm to give way to the next group, the diocese of Guimaras to hold theirs.)
I knew little of him other than his reputation for giving church resources to promote social justice, his advocacy to join the people’s movement against oppression and exploitation, and in upholding the country’s sovereignty against US imperialist control.
Even in his last days, he involved himself with vendors of the Iloilo City Central Market who were up in arms against its privatization by SM, a company known for its greed for profits and for mistreating its workers through its one-sided practice of contractualization and paying them starvation wags. On that issue, he also took side with consumers as the privatization of the public market will jack prices of goods sold there.
Even in his last days at the hospital, he continued to contact via text messaging Elmer Forro, one of organizer of the vendors. He asked for updates and informed the latter he was at the hospital. Their last exchange, Sunday morning, Forro told him they would visit him at Don Benito Hospital but he told them to spend their tight schedule with the market vendors. That was the last exchange.
Former Rep. Siegfred Deduro (Bayan partylist) spokesperson of Makabayan, aggrupation of militant partylists in Congress, calls Millamena, 67, a “martyr”.
“We are used to the thought that ‘martyr’ refers only to those who met violent deaths for the cause they believed in,” Deduro notes. “Bishop Millamena is a martyr: he spent his life advocating for the rights of poor and oppressed people up to his last breath.”
Millamena, Deduro told me on the side, was liberal with alcohol in his seminary days. Although he toned down his appetite for it in his latter years, the habit damaged his liver leading to cirrhosis.
He is married to Leticia Javier Alpas and is blessed with three children – Faith, Dakila and Hope.
On Friday, June 6, 2014, his remains will be transported to his home – Brgy. Millamena, Sibalom, Antique.
(NB: The necro was brief. We had to end by 4:30 pm to give way to the next group, the diocese of Guimaras to hold theirs.)
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