I was working on a story that involved a character in the late Aries Rufo’s book Altar of Secrets when Rappler announced the completion of the fourth cycle of the fellowship bearing his name.

BishopAccountabiltiy.org released on January 30, 2025  a list of 82 priests with ties to the Philippines and who have been accused of abusing minors. At least 10 have links to Cebu.

Shortly after that, a group of volunteers from Cebu attended a forum on clergy abuse in Manila. Discussing what he described as the Cebu “playbook” of dealing with abuse was a familiar name — Michal Gatchalian.

Gatchalian is a lawyer and a former altar boy who accused Augustinian Father Apolinario Mejorada of molesting him when he was still a minor. He is in Rufo’s book.

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Full circle moment

My Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship journey went full circle at that moment. The reason I applied for the fellowship was to do more reporting on the church. Rufo’s work is something to aspire for.

Looking back, I nearly gave up upon learning during the application that fellows were expected to write long-form pieces on disinformation and the media, not church stories. With the deadline looming, I planned to just try in the next cycle. The deadline, however, was extended so I took it as a sign to push through.

When I was accepted, Rappler’s senior multimedia reporter Paterno Esmaquel II, or “Pat,” became my mentor. In my opinion, Pat is the country’s best religion reporter. 

I wrote about the first cardinal from Serbia Archbishop Ladislav Cardinal Nemet and how the heritage town of Dalaguete mixed up the identity of its patron saint for centuries. Alongside campus journalist fellow Cris Bayaga from UP Cebu, we tackled the strict dress code at the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño.

For my final long-form article, I reported on how politicians who have been able to build huge platforms for themselves on social media now ignore or bypass journalists. I also wrote about the rise of journalist-creators in Cebu and how they built an audience independent of a media outfit. The stories were given a Newsbreak Excellence Award, a recognition given by Rappler’s fellowship core team during our virtual graduation.

The in-person training at Rappler in September 2024 covered open-source investigation, data journalism, long-form writing, and fact-checking, among others. Having been working on my own for long, the interaction during this training with other journalists was reinvigorating. 

The world today is a totally different place from when I started reporting in 1996 and quit full-time newsroom work in 2017. Disillusioned, I thought I was done with journalism. I edited my Twitter (now X) bio to “retired deadline chaser.”

But our startup’s Digital Tourism project with SMART would introduce me to church heritage and I started blogging about it. That led me back to news blogging and freelance reporting. I realized that I had space for reporting in a changed media environment.

Same old issues

When you read Rufo’s 2013 book, you’d find that not much has changed in the church. 

The challenge with reporting on the church is the opaqueness of the institution and how people place priests on a pedestal. It’s hard to hold them accountable in a culture that sees priests as maka gaba, you risk divine punishment if you’re seen as going against the clergy.

It’s also easy to be obsequious in church coverage. It is, after all, the only beat where you kiss the ring of your news source. 

But I only ever kiss the ring literally — my coverage has resulted in my blacklisting by one official and banning from the Archbishop’s Residence. The blacklisting is over. The ban was lifted by Archbishop Jose Palma, who invited me to Sunday lunch, apologized, and gave me an exclusive.

Rufo wrote that the church was more concerned about its priests than abuse victims. 

I was reminded of that when, after the names were released, a young cleric called for prayers for his brother priests. There was no such request for the victims. 

Gatchalian said Archbishop Palma’s statement was long but “there’s not even a single line of apology.” 

On the day the stories of Cebuano priests in the database came out, I was alerted that officials had converged at the Archbishop’s Compound.

I messaged sources. The consultors failed to meet in January and I thought that with the stories of priests linked to abuse, officials might be meeting about it.

I quickly changed and grabbed my news coverage bag for an ambush interview. It’s easy to decline to comment on the phone, it’s so much harder to say no to a reporter already outside your door.

One source replied in time to stop me from leaving my house in Lapu-Lapu City to go to the Archbishop’s Residence in Cebu City.

“The meeting is to plan for the 75th birthday of Archbishop Palma,” he said. I dropped my bag and stayed home. – Rappler.com

Max Limpag, a freelance journalist from Cebu, is a graduate of the 2024 Aries Rufo Journalism Fellowship.