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for Father Leonard...

because he believed in me...

Fr. R I C H A R D G. L E O N A R D, S.J.



If you asked me, “Who was the strongest influence in your life?” I would not hesitate. I’d say, “Father Leonard.”

BECAUSE HE BELIEVED IN ME.

More than anyone else, he thought I was bright. More than anyone else, he thought I was good.

Others -- relatives and teachers and Priests – were always a safe distance away. And I felt that if they’d love me at all, they’d love me within limits – THEIR limits. But their ultimate loyalty would always be somewhere else, a slave to their paradigms, their religions, and their fears.

And when the moment of truth would come, they would all be far away from the blood and the sand, worshipping their idols and their gods. And what if alas in the corrida of life I would stand helpless and alone before the dreaded el toro? Then adios, Arsenio ! Que lastima !

I would be left alone, condemned and rejected, and I would die. For to save me would cost too much. The others found that too expensive. But Father Leonard , I knew, would gladly die to save me. Because he really cared. And maybe that is what actually happened. Maybe, in the end, he actually died …. to save me.

He was a man of commitment. Of fierce and boundless loyalty. He would never forsake me. I knew this the very first time we met.

Richard George Patrick Leonard was a graduate of a military school, an expert marksman, sharp and clean in his thoughts, his words, his tactics and his strategies. His goals in life were clear, and he strove with all his heart to reach them..Every activity in every day was a battle, which he fought. And won. In his own quiet way.

And I was just a 75-pound kid from obscure Takurong and forgotten Manapla… an alien who evoked Ateneo derision every time he opened his Visayan mouth to pronounce an English sentence, flunking his Latin Grammar under Fr. Bonafe, and gawking with wistful envy at Francis Cavestany and Willie Breva as they marched up the Matina stage to receive their blue Second-Honor card from Mr. Gerry de la Vega and from Fr. Hudson Mitchell.

He was my Religion teacher, my Student Counsellor, my Confessor, my Friend. We played basketball after class together, and we walked the undulating trails through the coconut plantations to Times Beach with the other Matina kids on Saturday mornings.

I felt a simple, measureless sense of security because of Fr. Leonard. The undesignated big brother, father, and guardian angel. I knew that he would always be there beside me and for me, ready to protect me and defend me. Against all aggressors, against all laws and lawmakers, against every Crusade, or Inquisition.
He would always be there in unspoken fealty, to help me survive and to help me recover, to help me excel and reach my destiny -- because, because somehow, he believed in me.


I do not know if the other students had a similar take on Fr. Leonard…did they have the same intuitive, unshakeable certainty of his caring loyalty as I did? Probably not. Not as total. Not as intense.


In January 1956, while on a picnic in Times Beach with Balch and Eddie Lim, and Nells and Reginald, I was seized by a violent fit of coughing, and I spat a large amount of brick-red blood. Help!! My first thought was of Father Leonard, I did not know what to do…I had to tell Fr. Leonard! But he was still in a meeting in Jacinto.

The next day I went to San Pedro Hospital to have my chest x-rays. Dr. Virgilio Afable told me I had pulmonary tuberculosis. There were two large cavities in my lungs. I had to stop going to school, go into isolation, be completely quarantined, and have complete bed rest.

I was confused and afraid and shattered. What would happen to my plans of entering the Seminary after graduation? Maybe I would not even graduate! How could I, if I was not allowed to go to school?

Father Leonard was the only one I could really trust.

I saw him. And he took care of me. He made sure I would be exempted from going to class. He made sure that I would graduate. With Mr. Hudson Mitchell he asked Dr. Diosdado M. Tech, a TB Specialist with a MPH from Harvard Medical School , to oversee my entire situation.

My fears went away. Everything would be fine. Fr. Leonard was there.

And because I requested it, very early every morning he walked from the Ateneo to my house to bring me Holy Communion.

And when my hair got long, and I needed a haircut, Father Leonard requested a Jesuit Scholastic to visit me and give me my haircut at home. And that visiting Jesuit barber’s name was Fr. Francisco F. Claver, S.J., later to become Bishop Emeritus of Malaybalay, then Bontoc-Lagawe. My barber was a Bishop!

After class, Fr. Leonard would walk again from the Ateneo to my home to visit me, tell me the latest news in school, and bring me a large assortment of books to read — from lives of Christ and biographies of saints to the World Classics to detective stories and westerns and adventure and spy novels and…joke books. Yes indeed, I received a very pleasant and very excellent liberal education from Fr. Leonard and his daily visits.

I knew he was very, very busy at school, as Student Counsellor, Professor, Chaplain and—the man in charge of the Canteen. And yet every day he was there in my sick man’s room, wasting his precious time with me

From him and his great kindness I learned how to be kind to others, most especially the poor and the sick. From him I learned that the most important thing is to be compassionate and to love and to serve. Religion is beyond definitions and doctrine and words. True virtue is silent, boundless service for the sick , the helpless and the weak.

Then it was March, 1956. Graduation Day !!
Nani Jover would be Valedictorian. Mon Dacudao Salutatorian. And Balch would receive the Ateneo de Manila Full Scholarship Award.

What would I wear?? I had nothing. Father Leonard lent me his black pair of pants, which we had to alter, since her was bigger than I was. He lent me his shoes, which were two sizes too large. He lent me his white T--shirt, and we sneaked into the house bodega to find a second-hand barong tagalog. I did not look too bad. I was very happy I was graduating, despite my tuberculosis. Thank you so very much, dear Father Leonard.


Truly, I do not know what he saw in me. What I saw was what all the others saw – nothing. But Father Leonard, he thought the whole world of me, he thought I was a Prince among men. And he thought I had enough potential to become a good Jesuit.


In his second floor office-cum-living quarters, where hundred of us students sat on the floor to read his comic books and to enjoy his candies, Fr. Leonard told me he knew of only two Ateneo de Davao students who could become Jesuits. And I was one of them.

Forty years later told a Jesuit Rector that among all the Jesuits in the world , he ranked me in the top two.

And he said this although he was my Confessor, and he knew all my sins. Always, I was just myself. And still he believed in me. He knew how human I was. He knew my weaknesses, my pride, my sensusality. And yet he believed in me.

He never told me he believed in me. But he always, always acted as though he did.

A couple of months after we met in Davao, he thought I was good enough to read at table for the perfectionist Jesuits, even with Forbes J. Monaghan as the Prefect of Reading. Then when one of teachers had a nervous breakdown and could no longer teach his High School class, Fr. Leonard thought I was good enough to take over, although I was 16 years old, and only in first year College. And although I was still recovering from tuberculosis of the lungs.


Later that year Fr. Leonard thought I was good enough to be school librarian. I was a good teacher and a good librarian . Because Fr. Leonard believed in me.

And because he believed in me, I became an excellent College orator and radio and stage radio actor. And champion debater and gold-medal essayist and Most Outstanding Student Leader and the brains behind campus politics and the Dean’s Lister with PERFECT GRADES. All because Fr. Leonard believed in me.


And because he believed in me, I began to believe in myself. His image of me was of a good, gifted young man, noble in thought and deed. I craved to live up to that image.

I did not know what he saw in me. And neither could anyone else — not the other priests, not my relatives, my teachers, my friends. But Fr. Leonard could, and did, see a good man, a noble man.


Of course he never once told me that he believed in me. But he always treated me as though he did. All of this in his manly, sincere, no-nonsense, naturally-disciplined manner of relating with us students.


Maybe he simply saw the truth, and lived it.
Because of him, I saw a glimpse of this truth, and tried to live it.





But I deeply disappointed him, and caused him pain.

His dream for me was to be a good teacher, perhaps one better than him, and as a teacher, to influence the students and through them, the nation, towards Christian ideals and morality and liberation and Justice. “You belong to the university,” he said. “Someone else can distribute the pan-de-sal.”


I knew that if I strayed from this, his dream for me, I would deeply disappoint him and cause him pain.

But I had lived as a sacada among the sacadas -- as a poor, helpless exploited migrant worker in nine haciendas of Negros in 1969. The poor laborer had no champion and no voice. I was being invited by the signs of the times and by Jesus in my heart to be that champion and that voice.

I could not understand why Father Leonard did not understand: it was so clear! And he could not understand why I did not understand: it, too, was so very clear !!

The need to be loyal to the poor and to Jesus Christ Poor was infinitely more compelling than the need to be loyal to prudence and to my dear guide, Fr. Leonard. I decided to give my whole life, not to the classroom, but to the garbage dumps and the canefields and to the barrios of Mindanao.


But I had to make one last stop.
I made a private Retreat in the Trappist Monastery in Guimaras. I asked God to help me decide whether to join THE CISTERCIAN TRAPPISTS OF GUIMARAS, or to join the NEW PEOPLE’S ARMY. To serve my God … either by burying myself entirely in isolation and prayer as a monk, or.. going to the mountains, to fight and die for my country and my people, as a Communist rebel.

The Trappist Monastery? Or the NPA… because only total commitment made sense.
God’s answer was clear — remain a Jesuit !

If I remained a Jesuit, I thought I should volunteer to work either in Negros with Fr. Hector Mauri and Fr. Luis Jalandoni, or else to work in Mindanao with Bishop Francisco Claver and Fr. Godofredo Alingal. And Fr. Vincent Cullen. The Jesuits sent me to Malaybalay, Bukidnon, to engage in Social Action, with Bishop Claver.


Martial Law happened.
Martial Law went away.

But Martial Law and its aftermath had ravaged both of us. We were no longer what we used to be.

After thirty years and at least three burn-outs later, Father Leonard and I were together again, this time in the Jesuit Residence in Loyola Heights.


We were now much older and slower and weaker than before, both of us shell-shocked by service and by life. The fires that had once burned so brightly were now only spent embers that needed to be dug for in order to be found.



Sure, Fr. Leonard still taught and was still a fantastic, well-appreciated European History Professor, but gone was the elan and the joie d’vivre of 1955 and the following 20 years.

Nobody really knew what had happened. But Fr. Leonard was now only a shell of his once-fantastic personality . Before, he was a man full of energy and full of life, always looking around to see what he could do to help, ready to help all those who were in need.

Now, there was only a tired old man, who prepared for and taught his History classes well, but did not otherwise seem to care if the whole world and everybody in it collapsed and vanished from the universe. Nothing and no one seemed to interest him anymore.


But why the terrible transformation? From a zealous Francis Xavier to a zombie?


Nobody knew, and nobody dared to ask. Yet the few who had known him before and saw him now, could not help but wonder…..Fr. Leonard no longer circulated with non-Jesuits, and even among his fellow-Jesuits, he was a recluse.


BUT this lonely old man was my hero! My source of life. The main reason why Arsenio Jesena, clay feet and all, was still a Jesuit. Next to God, I owed Fr. Leonard everything. Everything.

What had forced him to become a living dead man?

I, Juni Jesena, was probably one of the few who felt comfortable talking with him, and, on some rare occasion, when he was not careful, he would let go of a word or a phrase, which taken together, gave me a probable explanation of what had heartlessly extinguished the once-beautiful and brilliant flame that had been Fr. Richard Leonard, S.J.

It seems that during Martial Law some student activists wrote and circulated a letter of protest against the Jesuits and the Ateneo, viciously accusing them of selfishness, greed and injustice. …despicable motives and behavior from people of such high calling.

And if that had not been enough, that same letter was passed around for signatures, and many Faculty Members signed it, including the Faculty Members who had been served generously and who owed so very much to Fr. Leonard and the Jesuit Fathers since the foundation of the Ateneo. Fr. Leonard had given his all…his very all… and THIS was his reward!

“Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms quite vanquished him…then burst his mighty heart…


Because I was close to him, and’ because he trusted me, I was able to introduce a little light and a little life into his tired and lonely heart.


Deep, deep down, he still loved Davao, and his boys from Davao. So we often talked about the old Davao, the good Davao, the happy Davao, the grateful Davao. And we welcomed visits and invitations to meals from the very few visiting Davao friends who had the kindness to remember. There was Sonny, and Amado, and Ernie, and H’ector, and their wives and children.. Then there were the new friends from Manila… especially Cory, and Ray, and Cosette, and Carding.

Unlike before, Fr. Leonard now allowed himself to go out, to attend dinners during special occasions. He smiled when Sonny and Ball sent him shoes and chocolates at Christmas time. He relished and enjoyed the Japanese fried rice and the tempura from Kamirori and Chinoy’s.

And once I aimed much higher. I made arrangements for Fr. Leonard to go with me and visit the provinces of Panay, ending up with a few days of pleasant rest in SEA WIND in Boracay. That would be so good for Fr. Leonard! To have a well-deserved, relaxing break like that.

For an old man who hardly dares go out of the campus, to agree to a prolonged, adventurous trip like that, was, I think, a fantastic achievement already.

And Fr. Leonard told me he wanted to go. And he wanted to go since I would be there with him, totally in charge of our trip.... and as always, he trusted me.!


But a few days before we left, as I explained our daily activities in great detail, his face saddened. Our whole excursion would entail too much exposure under the sun.. and Father Leonard HAD SKIN CANCER !

Of course I had to cancel our trip!

No Boracay trip together, but once again, he had proved that even in his frail condition, he was willing to follow me anywhere, and face any adventure, because he trusted me.



Not too long after that, Fr. Leonard started coughing very hard. And he was feeling pain in his chest.

The doctors told him he had CANCER. Of the lungs.


By this time I was already residing in the Jesuit KUANG CHI XAVIER SCHOOL for Chinese-Filipino boys
in San Juan.

Fr. Leonard was living in the Ateneo in Loyola Heights. H e was constantly in pain. He was brought to the Makati Medical Center.

His end was near..
I decided to visit Fr. Leonard in the hospital every day, no matter how tired or busy I was. After all, when long ago I was sick and alone, Father Leonard visited me everyday, no matter how tired or busy he was.



And this, I was able to do.

During his final hours, there were times when he could no longer speak, because of the pain. But whenever I would enter his room, or the I.C.U. his pain-filled eyes would light up….Father Leonard was glad, because I was there.


But there were more times when his eyes remained closed.

Are you asleep, Fr. Leonard, or are you awake, and in great pain? In great pain, because of the cancer, because of the warfare of life..
And now, as you look back and remember the battlefields of your life,… can you say you were a victor, or a failure !?... and because of people’s cruelty and ingratitude, was your entire life wasted?
Father, remember the pain, but also remember the joy. It was not all failure. We had countless moments of success. You can be proud of Balch, and so many others like him, with him.
Some strayed, but I know you have forgiven all those who may have saddened you.
And even now, as you lie there in pain, I know you are offering your cancer, your calvary and cross for your people…because …because they need you.
And in the next life, you will all meet again.

Jesus Christ Himself and His warriors and saints did not always win, in the eyes of the world and perhaps even in their own.

Fr. Richard Leonard, S.J., you have been a good soldier. You have always tried your best. And pleased The Father. You have suffered and fought with your Divine Captain to the ultimate battlefield . And now He awaits you, to welcome and reward you.

You have won the war.


+ + + + +


After Father Leonard died, I was hoping in my heart that I might be invited to preach at his funeral, so I could tell the little congregation about the man who believed in me.


I was not invited.


But perhaps, perhaps through this present article I can tell the whole world about Fr. Richard G. Leonard, S.J., the Man Who Believed in Me. And that he was a real father to me. And that I tried to be a son to him.


JuniJesena,sj 4 sept 07


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