In an interview with Punto, MAD national treasurer Lito Ong said his movement’s founder Quintin Paredes San Diego, who was shot dead in a resort in Aurora province last Nov. 7, had relayed the dream to him on the phone.
“On Nov. 5, he called me up and told me about the Blessed Virgin warning him in a dream about a threat to his life. He then asked for prayers for his safety,” said Ong.
Ong described San Diego as a Marian devotee. “Six years ago at the Maligaya resort, Barangay Caragsacan, Dingalan, Aurora where he was killed, he erected a bigger than life-size statue of Mama Mary, surrounded by a water pond and flowering plants. At least three persons have claimed the statue to be miraculous,” he said.
“For the past three years, he had been asking religious sisters in Vigan City to take over his farm where he had planted trees at Bongabon, Nueva Ecija. He wanted all the farm income to go to the sisters who have yet to take over his farm,” Ong noted.
“Another unfulfilled dream was the construction of a Mama Mary Chapel with two bell towers in his Bongabon farm. He wanted prayers done in that chapel for the success of his movement against dynasties,” he also said.
Ong said he learned from other MAD members that days before his death, San Diego had also called them to relay to them his dream. Last Nov. 3, he again called them for a meeting the following day.
He said 35 MAD members attended the meeting at the MAD headquarters on Panay Avenue in Quezon City.
“Apart from discussing plans for 2016, he also asked for forgiveness from those he had allegedly hurt in his life,” Ong recalled.
Ong also quoted the MAD founder as saying that in his dream, the Blessed Mother gave details about threat to San Diego’s life. “He claimed that the Blessed Virgin specifically mentioned a local politician as hiring two killers in a plot against his life,” he recalled.
Two days after calling Ong on the phone, San Diego was shot in the head four times by two motorcycle-riding men in Dingalan.
San Diego was one of the lead convenors of the August 26 People’s Coalition, formed after the 2013 Million People March Against Pork Barrel at the Luneta on National Heroes Day, August 26.
PDAF, which has been subject to abuse and corruption, was declared unconstitutional three months after the Million People March.
He was also one of those who filed for a petition for mandamus for the Supreme Court to order the return of the misused pork barrel funds to the national treasury San Diego was the son of the late Lourdes Babila Paredes, the first female justice of the Court of Appeals. As a regional trial court judge, Lourdes Paredes had convicted the scions of prominent families who raped actress Maggie de la Riva.
Paredes was the daughter of the late Senate Ppresident Quintin Paredes, a native of Abra.
