Manila (AsiaNews) - Norberto Manero Jr, responsible for the murder of Fr Tullio Favali, "paid a high price, and it is right that he should be given the chance to show that he has changed. The sadness remains that a priest, a just man, is dead, but this must not block the road to forgiveness". This is the comment given to AsiaNews by Romulo Valles, archbishop of Zamboanga,  on the release of the killer who in 1985 murdered with two rifle shots the missionary of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME).

Manero today emerges from prison after spending 22 years in confinement. He says he is deeply sorry about what he did, and wants to dedicate the rest of his life in service of the poor. His release from prison was ordered by the government, thanks in part to an agreement Manero signed in 2005 in the presence of Fr Peter Geremia - one of Fr Favali's fellow PIME missionaries - and of the bishop of Kidapawan at the time, Romulo Valles.

Archbishop Valles recalls that "the agreement was what changed the possibility of parole for Manero. I don't recall the many specific conditions that he agreed to observe, except for one" he would never again get involved in the violence in the southern part of the country, and would never again resort to violence".

This detail has specific importance when it is placed in the context of the diocese of Kidawapan, in the southern part of the island of Mindanao. It includes nine cities in the province of Cotabato, two in Maguindanao, and one in Sultan Kudarat, and covers a total area of 1,199 square kilometres, with a population of 670,000 inhabitants.

78% of these are Catholic, while 20 % are Muslim: conflict erupted between the two communities in the early 1970's, causing deaths whose number has never been precisely tallied. The region is also under pressure from a "land war", a battle between paramilitary groups - sometimes supported by the regular army - who in the name of the "war on communism" kill indiscriminately anyone who helps the poor and defenceless. Fr Tullio Favali fell as one of the victims of this war, killed on April 11, 1985, in Tulunan.

The situation of the Catholics in the southern Philippines, Archbishop Valles continues, "is different: there are areas like Ipil and Jolo, where Fr Bossi was kidnapped and where Fr Roda was killed yesterday, where it is truly difficult to bring the Gospel, both because of the presence of extremist Muslim fringe groups and because of the ethnic and political violence that shakes the region every day. Other places, like Zamboanga, are more peaceful: from here we try to bring comfort to those who work in the areas at risk".

Fr Favali was born in Sacchetta di Sustinente (Mantua) on December 10, 1946. He entered the seminary in 1957, where he received an ordinary middle school and high school education, beginning theology studies in his third year. In 1970, in the tumult following the Second Vatican Council, he decided to leave the diocesan seminary to consider his vocation. After a long personal journey, in 1978 he felt called to return to the priestly life, and after a trial period in the formation house of the PIME fathers in Busto Arsizio, he entered the PIME seminary in Monza, starting over from the beginning with his theology studies. He was ordained a priest on June 6, 1981, in the parish of Christ the King in Monza, and he asked to be sent to Guinea, but first he had to go to Chicago to perfect his English. Because of political difficulties, his attempt to get a visa to enter Papua New Guinea was stalled, so the superiors of the order sent him first to do missionary activities in Italy at the PIME college seminary in Sotto il Monte (BG), and then to the Philippines. After a period of language study, on June 12, 1984, he entered "on tiptoe" (as he liked to put it) into the extreme southern part of the Philippines, ten degrees south of the equator. Beside him, as pastor, he found Fr Peter Geremia, from Treviso, who had been in the Philippines for many years and was very well known. On February 23, 1985, he replaced Fr Peter as pastor of Tulunan, but after only a year and a half in the missions, near the village of La Esperanza in Tulunan, he was brutally murdered by a group led by Manero, who accused him of communist sympathies.