http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view_article.php?article_id=95723Torture claims mar beatification of martyr
By Jerome Aning
Inquirer
Last updated 01:38am (Mla time) 10/21/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- The scheduled beatification of a Spanish Augustinian friar who died as a martyr during the Spanish Civil War has stirred a
minor controversy due to allegations of torture when he was a young missionary in the Philippines.
Fr. Gabino Olaso Zabala OSA, who will be proclaimed a Catholic martyr by Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 28 for having died “in odium fidei” (a Latin phrase meaning “in hatred of the faith,” turned out to have been guilty of torture during a much earlier period in his life.
Zabala was one of the 98 Augustinian priests and seminarians executed by Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Fr. Mariano Dacanay, a Filipino priest from Aringay, La Union, who was imprisoned by Spanish authorities in Vigan in September 1896 shortly after the outbreak of the Philippine Revolution, said Zabala was among those who tortured him.
Dacanay, four other priests and five seminarians were accused of being part of a “Tagalog conspiracy” to bring the revolution to the Ilocos and assassinate leading Spanish government officials and clergy.