He approached Smokey Mountain, much like Moses approached the burning bush

THIS is a remarkable testimony of a professional theologian doing his theology out of living 30 years with scavengers on a huge garbage dump in the heart of Manila in the Philippines. After his doctorate in Rome and some years teaching in a theology school Benigno Beltran led his classes to get acquainted with the people of Smokey Mountain. Then he decided to live there himself to share fully in the life of people generally despised by the rest of society.

Beltran approached Smokey Mountain, much like Moses approached the burning bush, with a sense of approaching the Mystery that was his God. In the people amidst the rising stench of the dump he felt he was in the presence of the Unknown. He did not go as a teacher but as a learner of the language and culture of a supposedly lost people. He went there to befriend them and found himself accepted and graced with their love, their humble resources scrounged from the dump. He got to know the “God of the Poor and Oppressed.” He picked up “the smell of his flock,” as Pope Francis insisted for priests.