The Catholic priest in the central Philippines who posed as a pedicab driver and saved a couple from separation on Christmas Day did it again.
This time his driving saved three lives.
Father Christian Benjamin of the Diocese of Dumaguete had another passenger on Christmas evening, a woman.
“Why so late tonight, ma’am?” asked the priest.
“I just came from work. I’m on my way home,” answered the woman.
The priest asked what the woman does. She said she is a health worker.
Not knowing the direction to his passenger’s destination, the priest stopped and asked the “real” pedicab driver who was following the priest with the choir.
The choir was supposed to start singing Christmas carols as the priest distributes food packs to unsuspecting “passengers.”
“The woman got suspicious and looked worried when I got off and talked with another driver,” narrated Father Benjamin during Mass for the Feast of the Holy Innocents on Dec. 28.
The priest was able to bring his “passenger” to her destination without blowing his cover.
When the woman paid for the fare, Father Benjamin returned it with a food pack and, of course, with the Christmas carols of the choir.
“She was so happy,” said the priest. “But you would notice that there was something wrong.”
Father Benjamin told the woman of his real identity before leaving.
“I started to drive away, but I decided to look back to give the woman a wave,” the priest said.
Days later, while Father Benjamin and his fellow priests were celebrating their Christmas party, he got a call from the parish office, informing him that a woman was looking for him.
“You’re really a priest here,” said the woman when Father Benjamin came out.
“I can’t remember you, ma’am,” said the priest.
The woman reminded the priest of the Christmas evening ride. Then she cried.
She said she lied to the priest when she claimed she was on her way home.
“I wasn’t going home,” she admitted. “I was on my way to deliver medicine to abort three children. I was confused. I needed money.”
“When you left,” she told the priest, “I was staring at you and then you turned and waved,” said the woman.
“I suddenly got goosebumps. I threw the abortion pills,” she told the priest.
She walked home crying but with a light heart that Christmas evening, thanks to the “driver-priest.”
