UPDATE AFP 9/29/12: Philippine authorities looking for religious statues made from "blood" ivory were prevented from entering a church where the banned items were allegedly kept, a government investigator said on Saturday.
The New York Times
written by Floyd Whaley
Thursday September 27, 2012
MANILA — A Roman Catholic priest in the Philippines accused of ivory smuggling is under investigation by the Vatican and has been stripped of his ministerial duties since June in connection with unrelated sexual abuse allegations, a church spokesman said Thursday.
“We have received instructions from the Holy See that he is under investigation,” said Msgr. Achilles Dakay, a spokesman for the church in the central Philippine province of Cebu, where the accused priest, Msgr. Cristóbal Garcia, is based. “He has been replaced in his ministerial positions.”
The ivory smuggling investigation was prompted by an article in the October issue of National Geographic magazine that quotes Monsignor Garcia as telling a U.S. reporter how to smuggle illegal elephant ivory figurines into the United States.
The Philippines is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty that regulates international trade in plants and animals. The trading of ivory has been banned under the treaty since 1990.
Monsignor Dakay said the Manila Archdiocesan Commission on the Cultural Heritage of the Church was examining whether parts of a vast collection of ivory figurines owned by Monsignor Garcia were secured after the 1990 ban.
The Philippine National Bureau of Investigation and the country’s wildlife protection agency are investigating the claims made in the article, government officials said this week.
Monsignor Dakay would not confirm whether the church was cooperating with the government’s smuggling investigation.
“The N.B.I. must get a court order if they want to examine the collection,” Monsignor Dakay said. “It is private property.”
The same article notes that Monsignor Garcia was accused in the 1980s of abusing altar boys in Los Angeles. He was subsequently transferred to the Philippines and became a respected high-ranking church official. It was those accusations that prompted the church to strip him of his ministerial duties in June.
“We were surprised by this investigation,” Monsignor Dakay said. “This was a case from the 1980s, and it was revived just because it was mentioned in National Geographic magazine?”
The National Geographic article by Bryan Christy, titled “Blood Ivory” and subtitled “Ivory Worship,” carries the tag line, “Thousands of elephants die each year so that their tusks can be carved into religious objects. Can the slaughter be stopped?”
It examines the illegal ivory trade in several countries in Asia, including the Philippines, and mentions the sexual allegations against Monsignor Garcia as an aside.
Church officials said this week that they felt the article was biased and presented an unfair picture of the use of religious figurines in the Philippines. Monsignor Dakay reiterated that sentiment Thursday.
“Reading between the lines of the National Geographic article, you can see there is some malicious intent to downgrade the church,” he said.
“Just because we have some ivory or marble figurines, we are not idol worshipers,” he added.
The church spokesman said the writer, Mr. Christy, visited Cebu several times while reporting the story. He introduced himself as a Catholic journalist interested in representations of the Holy Child, called Santo Niño in the Philippines.
“This man Bryan Christy misrepresented himself as a devotee of Santo Niño,” Monsignor Dakay said. “He was very meek and humble during the interviews, and then he came out and attacked our church.”
The accused priest could not be reached for comment late Thursday. Church officials said earlier in the week that he was ill and resting.
Religious icons and statues are popular among Catholics in the Philippines, and those made of pure ivory are among the most treasured. Religious specialty shops openly sell pure ivory icons, and many parishes will have a treasured ivory statue of the infant Jesus or one of the saints that are celebrated during festivals.
Senior church officials said this week that the Catholic Church supported the global ban on trading ivory but noted that some of the artifacts in Philippine churches predated the 1990 ban and were considered part of the cultural heritage of local communities.
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