Did ‘NatGeo’ man misrepresent himself?

By Butch del Castillo / Omerta

I JUST finished reading National Geographic’s highly controversial cover story in its October issue, entitled “Blood Ivory, 25,000 elephants were killed last year,” by Bryan Christy. On the inside page where the story starts, the piece carries the subtitle, “Ivory Worship.”

It was this article, particularly the part after the introduction establishing the “Philippine connection” in the resurgent illicit world trade in ivory from African elephant tusks, that prompted the Holy See in Rome to suspend and investigate prominent ivory collector Msgr. Cristobal Garcia only last week.

Garcia was described in Christy’s article as “head of protocol for the country’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese with a flock of nearly 4 million in a country of 75 million Catholics.” Before his suspension, Garcia was the chairman of Cebu’s Archdiocesan Commission on Worship.

The Vatican’s punitive action against Garcia was based on revelations made in Christy’s NatGeo article that tended to show Garcia was in the know about the smuggling of Santo Niño (Holy Child) icons into the United States.

The article also cited a blot in Garcia’s work record as revealed by the Dallas Morning News in a news item in 2005. It seems that Garcia was dismissed in the mid-1980s while serving as a priest of St. Dominic’s in Los Angeles, California, after he was found to have sexually abused an altar boy in his early teens.

The story of Garcia’s suspension was run by The New York Times in its September 27 issue. The NYT story, under the byline of Floyd Whaley, led off with:

“A Roman Catholic priest in the Philippines accused of ivory smuggling is under investigation by the Vatican and has been stripped of his ministerial duties since June in connection with unrelated sexual abuse allegations, a church spokesman said on Thursday.”

Actually, the Vatican’s action against Garcia was announced separately by Cebu Archbishop Jose S. Palma and Msgr. Achilles Dakay, Central Visayas spokesman for the Church. But it was Dakay whom the NYT quoted in its story.

There is global interest in the issues raised by the NatGeo article because the Philippines is a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It was under this treaty that the trading of ivory was banned starting in 1990.

Monsignor Dakay told the NYT that the Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines didn’t expect that an investigation would be ordered by Rome. “This was a case from the 1980s, and it was revived just because it was mentioned in National Geographic magazine?”

In his NatGeo article, Christy recounted how Garcia unwittingly gave himself away, or came to reveal his involvement in the smuggling of Sto. Niño icons to the United States.

“I had no illusions of linking Monsignor Garcia to any illegal activity, but when I told him I wanted an ivory Santo Niño, the man surprised me. ‘You will have to smuggle it to get it into the US.’

“‘How?’

“‘Wrap it in old, stinky underwear and pour ketsup on it,’ he said. ‘So it looks shitty with blood. This is how it is done.’

“Garcia also made the mistake of giving Christy the names of his favorite ivory carvers in Manila “along with advice on whom to go to for high volume, whose wife overcharges, who doesn’t meet deadlines…. If I wanted to smuggle an icon that was too large to hide in my suitcase, I might get a certificate from the National Museum of the Philippines declaring my image to be antique, or I could get a carver to issue a paper declaring it to be imitation or alter the carving date to before the ivory ban…Whatever I decided to commission, Garcia promised to bless it for me. ‘Unlike those animal nut priests who will not bless ivory.’”

The NYT story said Church officials felt Christy’s article was biased and presented “an unfair picture of the use of religious figurines in the Philippines.”

Dakay echoed that sentiment by saying: “Reading between the lines…you can see there is some malicious intent to downgrade the Church…. Just because we have some ivory or marble figurines, we are not idol worshipers.”

Dakay also told the Times that “this man Bryan Christy misrepresented himself as a devotee of Santo Niño…. He was very meek and humble during the interviews, and then he came out and attacked our Church.”

Dakay also recalled that Christy visited Cebu several times and introduced himself as a Catholic journalist interested in representations of the Holy Child, called Santo Niño in the Philippines.

Cebu folk whom Christy had used as sources for his Blood Ivory story—including heritage experts and conservationists—felt dismayed, disappointed and betrayed when the article came out.

It seems that his assurance to them that he was writing about Cebu’s devotion to the Holy Child Jesus was what made them fully cooperate and answer all his questions without reservations.

The same thing could have happened in the case of Monsignor Garcia. Before introducing himself and explaining his visit, Christy made a grand gesture of kneeling before Monsignor Garcia to receive communion. Christy included this tidbit in his story as if to gloat how he tricked his sources to be able to get the delicious details he needed for his story.

Trizer Dale Mansueto, a Cebu-based historian involved in heritage conservation, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer after reading Christy’s damaging article that “if we knew that he was writing about ivory icons, we wouldn’t have cooperated with him.”

It seems Christy had convinced them that he was writing about the devotion, not about ivory at all.

The PDI story said Christy sent an e-mail to Mansueto on September 25 explaining that he did not seek to call attention to ivory smuggling in the Philippines, but “to think about the many kinds of devotion, including to wildlife.”

Nevertheless, Mansueto told Christy that “we are disappointed…Filipinos being portrayed as fanatics, idol worshipers, smugglers, etc., in a rather appalling story…Cebu has never been a transshipment point for smuggled ivory.”

Judging from the reactions of the prelates and the people from whom Christy gathered the material for his sensational story, it would seem that Bryan Christy of National Geographic did misrepresent himself. In journalism—and there are no ifs and buts about it—misrepresenting oneself is a serious breach of ethics.

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