On December 8, 1941, the Philippines was invaded by Japanese troops. Following the fall of Gen. Douglas McArthur’s forces in Bataan and Corregidor, President Quezon instituted a government-in-exile that he headed until his death in 1944. He was succeeded by Vice-President Sergio Osmena. U.S. forces under McArthur came back to the Philippines in October 1944 and, after the liberation of Manila in February 1945, Osmena re-established the government and became its president. The Japanese occupation was marked by savagery and cruelty, especially evident in the Japanese prison camps.
In one of these camps, situated in Los Baños, south of Manila, the young American Jesuit scholastic James Reuter was interned together with his companions. At 22, he arrived full of enthusiasm in 1938 to complete his philosophy studies, first in Novaliches and then in Baguio. In the prison camp, he was assigned the duty of burying dead inmates. His time in the Los Baños concentration camp was very miserable.
“The real suffering was hunger,” James Reuter wrote years later in a letter. “We were getting two ounces of rice in the morning and two ounces in the afternoon. That was all.” The visions he had were all of breakfast, lunch and dinner. But his accounts of life in Los Baños are full of optimism and humor. Looking back on that year of hunger and deprivation, he later wrote of “feeling sorry” for brother Jesuits not appreciating breakfast, dinner or supper – because they were never hungry. He concluded: “And then I realized: the blessing is not having a lot to eat . . . The blessing is hunger! When you are hungry, everything tastes beautiful!” Underlying his energy and drive was faith, a faith that was at once very deep and simple in its unwavering assurance that God will always be there and will take charge.
In early 1945, while the Japanese guards were doing their daily calisthenics, U.S. paratroops sprung a surprise assault and quickly took over the Los Baños camp. As he was liberated, Reuter was overcome by patriotic emotion and vowed then that he would never give up his U.S. citizenship. He would recall four decades later: “Coming into Manila in a military jeep, in the bright morning sunlight, with my hair blowing in the wind, I was in real ecstasy. We were free! We were really free!”
A MODEL SEMINARIAN
Fr. James B. Reuter was born on May 21, 1916 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to German-Irish parents, James Reuter and Marguerite Hangarter. He was the eldest of six children. He went to a Jesuit high school and graduated valedictorian. He was on the school magazine, was into dramatics and excelled in the school’s debating team which went undefeated for three years. He also played football and basketball. All these talents and background he would bring to his mission in the Philippines.
At 18, he entered the Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville, Pennsylvania in 1934; took his vows, did his two-year juniorate there as well, and then came to the Philippines. In late May 1941, he came to the Ateneo de Manila to do his regency when war broke out. His group continued their studies of theology through the war, including their period of internment in Los Banos. After they were liberated in early 1945, he returned to finish theology at Woodstock College in the U.S. and was ordained priest on March 24, 1946.
After special studies in radio and television broadcasting at Fordham University, he returned to the Philippines in 1948, where he would spend the rest of his life. His first assignment was to teach at the Ateneo de Naga in the Bicol region, where he began to blossom. He taught English and religion, but after class, he was in charge of five extracurricular activities: the school’s monthly magazine and yearbook, the glee club, the debate team, dramatics, and the varsity basketball team.
MAMA MARY’S AGENT
He was re-assigned to the Ateneo de Manila in 1952, where his versatility was put to full use. His theatrical talents were already well-known. But soon after his return to Manila, he revived the Ateneo Glee Club, which “quickly became something of a national phenomenon,” according to one account of those years. He was ahead of his time in understanding the role and power of mass media and so, from 1960 onward, his main apostolate was in media: print, radio, television. He became director of the National Office of Mass Media, coordinating the media activities of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.
It all started in 1947, when Fr. Reuter first heard of the rapidly growing mission of Fr. Patrick Peyton of the Congregation of the Holy Cross that promoted the praying of the Family Rosary. Both Fr. Reuter and Fr. Peyton believed that the most effective means of propagating the Word of Christ and the messages of the Blessed Virgin Mary was through the use of the emerging mass communication tools like radio, film and television.
Fr. Reuter submitted, of his own initiative, a short drama for radio, to Fr. Peyton and it was used in the weekly broadcasts of the Family Theater radio shows. The drama, titled “Stolen Symphony,” was awarded best drama by the Ohio State Award. Upon returning to the Philippines, Fr. Reuter got famed Filipino actor and actresses to volunteer their voices and acting talent to dramatize family-oriented soaps and the praying of the rosary. Fr. Reuter brought Family Theater to television in 1953.
‘REUTER’S BABIES’
It is to Fr. Reuter’s reckless faith, together with his foresight in building the Federation of Catholic Broadcasters of the Philippines, that we owe much of the dominant communications role of the Church in the snap elections and in the success of the 1986 EDSA revolution.
Earlier throughout martial law, Fr. Jim (as he was affectionately called) helped keep the fire burning through his beautiful and powerful articles against martial law: they were examples of elegant and effective communication. The radio network of the Federation of Catholic Broadcasters of the Philippines remained the one independent source of news during the years of media control under martial law.
The Federation’s members, along with Radio Veritas and five college radio stations, were linked to each other and to four mobile units by shortwave radio and computers. As the elections approached, Reuter’s team trained intensively with the new equipment so that they could relay swift and honest reports on the results.
During the elections, Reuter’s studios at Xavier House coordinated the flow of news to and from member stations, the colleges and the mobile units that were placed strategically around Manila and operated by teams of ‘Reuter’s babies.’
Courageously, they clung to them, ready to be arrested if necessary. Fr. Jim’s reckless faith and courage had rubbed off deeply on those ‘Reuter’s babies.’ The dramatic 18 hours of Radyo Bandido and June Keithley, in a secret location right in the middle of the city, and the exhilaration of the victory of EDSA 1 were all proofs of this. In all this, Fr. Jim described his role as accidental. He had mobilized his team for an election, not a revolution. But he said: “When the crisis came, the system worked.”
INEXHAUSTIBLE ENERGY
This is how Fr. Bienvenido F. Nebres, S.J. speaks of Fr. Jim: “I first met Fr. Jim at Sacred Heart Novitiate, where I entered as a novice after high school in 1956. He was making his retreat and I watched him doing laps in the 25-meter pool of the Novitiate. What I cannot forget was when he started swimming slow laps underwater — going to one end and coming back without surfacing, then he would surface, take a deep breath and repeat, over and over again.”
“Fr. Jim could swim from one island to another. They used to send a boat to follow him to make sure he was safe. That was when he was in the prime of life, but 30 years later, he still had the same amazing energy. He used to jog regularly at 3 or 4 a.m. and, one time, he came home with a big gash on his forehead and blood all over his track suit. He had run into a tricycle in the dark. “I’m ok,” he said, so we asked, “Yes, but how is the tricycle?” The foundations of Fr. Jim’s inexhaustible energy and optimism was a deep and simple faith, simple in the sense of the beatitude: ‘Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.’”
He brought all the energy and talent to the university he served as we can argue from the many tributes from his former players, debaters, actors and actresses and stagehands. This flurry of energy and activities was simply his use of his inexhaustible enthusiasm and many gifts to bring God to people and people to God. In the end, it was about all these young men and women in a commitment and friendship that would be, for very many, a lifelong one.
Fr. Jim declared during his long old age: “The athletes that I have coached in basketball, when they were students, call me when they are sick. I have visited so many of them in the hospital, heard their last confessions, anointed them, and then said Mass for them, when they had gone home to God.” In this apostolate of media, he reached thousands, millions more, and developed new deep friendships in the Lord.
“The only thing that I see is the holiness of the Filipino people. The Filipino people are very, very close to God,” Fr. Reuter said in 2009. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism in 1989 and was granted honorary Filipino citizenship by the Philippine Congress in 2006.
A MENTOR OF GENERATIONS
Fr. James Reuter, an influential force in Philippine education, media and theater for over seven decades, died at the age of 96, on December 31, 2012. He had been ailing for years, but still managed to produce newspaper columns and make periodic appearances at events held in his honor. He was the executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines Commission on Social Communications and Mass Media for 39 years.
“He was a very pious and exemplary Jesuit priest who was always wearing his sotana, the habit of Jesuits. He was a great communicator of the Good News of Jesus, using modern media,” said Bishop Arturo Bastes upon learning of Reuter’s death. His appreciation was reflected by the statements of innumerable other public figures both of the Church and of society at large.
The Office of the President from Malacañang also issued a statement on the passing of Fr. Reuter, who “was friend, mentor, confessor, adviser to generations of Filipinos, both in public and private life, and in the media, arts, and journalism.” “We join the Society of Jesus in the Philippines, the hundreds of alumni of the Ateneo de Manila University, and men and women of media, arts, and letters, who mourn the loss of this man of faith, good cheer, and eloquence. His love of the Philippines and Filipinos was legendary; so much so it earned him a stature and affection beyond the measure of the many awards he received throughout his long life.”
Fr. Jim’s body was transferred to Church of the Gesu, inside the Ateneo de Manila University’s Katipunan campus. As per custom, his casket was laid feet facing the congregation to reflect his life’s status as a priest ministering to the faithful. The Requiem Mass for Fr. Reuter was held on January 5, 2013, said by Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila. The interment followed at Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches, Quezon City, where he rests along with other Jesuit priests and seminarians, in a peaceful cemetery, surrounded by the huge trees and vast grounds of that place of prayer. Photos Sr. Sarah Manapol
