Philippine priest turns poor parishioners into tech-savvy e-traders

Published: 2006-01-04

MANILA, Philippines (CNS) -- Divine Word Father Benigno Beltran talks about bandwidth, e-trading and income streams with the ease of a Silicon Valley technophile, yet the ever-present smell of burning garbage betrays his surroundings. Father Beltran is pastor of Manila's Parish of the Risen Christ, a congregation of scavengers who live alongside Smokey Mountain, the Philippine capital's legendary -- and ever smoldering -- garbage dump. Father Beltran, who has lived among his parishioners for 27 years, knows their desperate marginalization, so he is aggressively pushing a high-tech solution to their poverty. "Globalization is only antagonistic to those who aren't prepared for it," said Father Beltran, who was born on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. "If the poor are unprepared, if they're still linked to the industrial age when we're living in the cybernetic age, then globalization won't benefit them. So it's the responsibility of the church and civil society to ready the poor. We shouldn't hold back the march of history. Our faith tells us to move from the garden to the heavenly city."

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