Priest on the Picket Line

By night, Colonel Andres Soriano, a tall, imperious gentleman with, a bristling mustache, is a glittering figure at Manila's diplomatic receptions and society soirees. Soriano loves to dance, is frequently seen cutting elegant capers at the Riviera, Manila's fanciest nightclub. By day, Soriano is an industrial tycoon whose multimillion-dollar interests include the Magnolia Dairy, the San Miguel Brewery, and the Philippine Air Lines. He is also a powerful figure behind the government of President Elpidio Quirino.

Soriano's polar opposite in Manila is stocky, cleft-chinned Father Walter B. Hogan, 37, a Jesuit priest from Philadelphia who arrived in the Philippines in 1933, became a teacher at Ateneo de Manila, a Jesuit college. He was professor of classics and the clarinet-toting mentor of the school band; the boys called him "Benny Goodman in a cassock." He also developed a deep interest in Filipino workers and Catholic trade unionism; in 1947 he established Ateneo's Institute of Social Order.

Father Hogan has said: "Religion is a pretty abstract thing if a guy isn't getting three square meals a day." He knows that three square meals a day are not possible for most Filipino wage earners, who average $2.46 a day for unskilled labor, $3.80 for skilled. When Manila capitalists recently complained of Father Hogan to Apostolic Delegate Egidio Vagnozzi, the Vatican envoy firmly replied: 'Father Hogan is preaching the doctrine of the church."

A Cry of Anger. At 6:15 one morning last week, two hours after Philippine Air Line workers, backed by the National Labor Union, had thrown a picket line around Manila's International Airport in a protest strike against anti-union firings, Colonel Soriano swept through the line in his Cadillac Fleetwood to see what was going on. A little later, escorted by two P.A.L. vice presidents and an armed guard, Soriano made a speech summoning the workers to return to their jobs.

As Soriano was speaking, Father Hogan took a place at the head of the picket line, earnestly urged the workers to stay out until their demands were met. This was too much for Philippine Labor Secretary Primitive Lovina, who also happens to be a close friend of Colonel Soriano. Hogan, Lovina said, was "an undesirable alien and a mere agitator."

Undeterred, Jesuit Hogan answered: "I will not stop while there is reason to fight . . . What makes the situation critical here is that the worker still lives in a shack, eats an inadequate diet and is not prepared for any emergency. This is all wrong."

A Cry of Peril. Many Filipinos felt sure that Father Hogan's action was not an individual protest; they thought that the P.A.L. dispute might grow into a major rift between the church and the Philippine government. Manila remembered an eloquent address last fall to Catholic lay leaders in which Apostolic Delegate Vagnozzi had exhorted "the wealthy people [and] businessmen":

"Do not be blind, look into the stark reality; if you insist on exploiting God's poor for the fattest profit you can get today, you are going to lose everything tomorrow, your capital, your business, your profits, probably your very life ... in . . . the whirlwind of social upheaval . . ."

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