Fr. Alberto: Shepherd to a Stubborn Flock

1. In the Ifugao Mountains of Luzon

Fr. Alberto opened the door with a quizzical look that quickly softened as he invited me in. Small, grey‑haired, and bright‑eyed, he lived in a presbytery squeezed between a small church and smaller hospital in an Ifugao mountain village. As an outsider without the local dialect, he admitted to communication challenges, though, he said, his young curate, Fr. Francis a local, made up for that. His parish counted ten thousand Catholics among twenty‑four thousand villagers. “Of course, some of them are dead already,” he said, leaning back in his chair with an infectious laugh. I didn’t pursue the puzzling remark. “But then again,” he continued, “others are born: new babies, new baptisms, you know.”

2. Wrestling With Ancestral Beliefs

When asked about weaning his flock away from traditional customs, Fr. Alberto sighed and laughed at the same time. The villagers, he said, held “strange beliefs”—animist practices rooted in spirits and the agricultural cycle. The young curate Fr. Francis who had been passing the open parlour door and had been invited to join us explained. He described sacrifices to the Rice Goddess at planting and thanksgiving rites at harvest time. “But that’s to keep away the rats, too,” Fr. Alberto interrupted with a smile in an aside. Rather than suppress these rituals, the priests tried to “Christianize” them, giving them spiritual meaning. Some traditional practices, Alberto admitted, even seemed to work—like the healer, he knew, who blew on skin ailments and cured them.

3. Baptism, Names, and the Weight of Tradition

Fr Alberto told how the elders resisted Christian baptism, often preferring their own rite, the Huldung, performed at age seven. A medium blew well-chewed betel nut and tobacco spittle onto the child’s forehead and named it after an ancestor. Still, the Church’s influence showed: many village children bore names like José, Maria, and Francis—paired with traditional second names that reminded them of their ancestors.

4. Marriage, Fertility, and Fragile Bonds

Marriage remained a difficult problem, Fr Alberto warmed to the subject. Without children, a man could “put the woman away,” even after a church wedding. Some women had been married many times. The priests promoted adoption as a Christian alternative, but bloodline mattered deeply in Ifugao culture. The traditional marriage rite prayed that the couple “survive and multiply”— something adoption could not easily replace. At this point Fr. Francis mentioned deferentially they were making progress and gave an example of an adoption that had worked.

5. Death, Burial, and the Long Goodbye

Burial customs fascinated and perplexed Fr. Alberto. Bodies were smoked into mummies and kept for days—up to twenty if the family was wealthy. Each day needed the slaughter of animals for communal meals, making funerals financially draining. He confessed, with a shy smile, that he had never actually attended one but seemed to like the idea.

6. The Circle of Revenge

The conversation changed when I asked whether the idea of headhunting was finished. Fr. Alberto burst into laughter and pointed at Fr. Francis: “Ask him! He ran away!” Fr, Francis took over the story and explained quietly: a relative had been killed, and the family was bound by duty to avenge him. All male kin sat in a circle while a decapitated chicken was released; whoever it stopped in front of had to take the enemy’s head. The chicken stopped in front of fifteen‑year‑old Francis. He fled to a convent—and eventually became a priest. Even with the killer jailed, Francis said, “There will be a head for a head.” The obligation remained. I didn’t press him on whether he was still involved in the story.

7. Between Two Worlds

As I left, walking and balancing along the narrow mud walls of the terraced paddies, I could feel a little what the priests lived with—balancing between tradition and modernity. Army patrols were moving through the village to protect road‑building crews and machinery from local resistance. The new road, carrying lowland ideas into the mountains, was meeting fierce opposition. Two worlds were colliding on the slopes of Luzon, and neither would give in easily in this classic clash of beliefs.