How loss and love led a young Filipino to the Swiss Guard

MANILA, Philippines – The early loss of his mother, the loving care of three big families, a childhood split across Mindanao regions and, later, across continents, and a father who trusted his children to find their life paths led Sebastian Esai Eco Eviota to become the first member of the Vatican’s elite Swiss Guard of full Filipino origin.

Eviota, 23, was accepted in January 2022 into the Swiss Guards, the world’s smallest army and protector of the pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

He has completed his two-month training; the 2022 recruits will take their oath on May 6, 2023. The date  honors 147 Swiss Guards who died in 1527 blocking the troops of  Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, as Pope Clement VII fled the sack of Rome.

The Swiss Guard is independent of the Swiss armed forces. With only 135 members, the 516-year old army is known for a very competitive application process. 

Applicants should be male Swiss citizens, Catholic, unmarried, between 19 to 30 years of age, and at least 174-cm., with a degree or high school diploma, plus Switzerland’s mandatory military training.

Eviota is the second Swiss Guard of Filipino descent, The Guards in 2020 accepted Swiss-Filipino Vincent Lüthi, whose mother is from Cebu.

Grandparents’ influence

Baste (Sebastian’s nickname) was nine years old in 2009 when he and sister Sophia reunited with his father Diomedes Eviota Jr., a former journalist who migrated to Switzerland in 2006.

Baste was only two years old and Sophia, six, when their mother, Editha Eco, died on March 11, 2000. 

Editha’s parents, devout Catholics with roots in Leyte, helped her grieving family. 

Baste’s maternal grandfather, Sofronio, attended mass almost daily in a parish church just a few hundred meters from their home. His wife, Graciana, was just as religious and made just as deep an impression on the boy.

When Diomedes Jr., who is nicknamed Brady, left for Switzerland, the children went to live with his parents in Surigao. 

There, their grandfather’s favorite hobby would be the seed of Baste’s career, said Diomedes Jr. of his namesake, the late Surigao City regional trial court judge.

“Baste spent three years with my father when I left the Philippines,” Brady, told Rappler in a telephone interview. 

The retired judge, a quiet man of calm manners, also loved the sometimes bloody sport of boxing and war history, the latter the result of being a child during World War II.

“Baste would tell me of the hours they spent watching and discussing war documentaries on cable television,” Brady recalled. 

Finding his niche

During his four-month mandatory military training, Baste came to love army life. He decided to continue for two more years, eventually becoming a second lieutenant in the Swiss army, said his father.

Baste tried to find a career in the small Swiss military but there were no open positions for a young man in a professional army with less than 10,000 regulars. Switzerland has always opted for neutrality and so its army does not take part in wars.

He eyed becoming a cop or detective but decided it wasn’t for him. The Swiss Guard was the perfect choice for a young man with deep faith and a military bent. 

“Seldom is the traditional and the modern so tightly joined together as in the Swiss Guard,” notes current commander, Christop Graf, on their official website. 

Behind the blue, red, orange, and yellow Renaissance uniform, Graf adds, is “a modern, well-trained, young Swiss. What connects him to his 16th century predecessors is his firm conviction that he serves Christ’s Church and his Vicar on Earth, the successor of Saint Peter. That he will sacrifice his own life if necessary to protect the pope.” 

Joining the Vatican’s army also allows exposure on the international stage and education in the latest developments and practice in personal security.

But Graf, in his May 6 message during this year’s oath-taking rites, also said the guards need to be steeped in the Christian faith and values to be “instruments in the service of peace”.

The older Eviota heard the good news of his grandson’s acceptance in the Swiss Guard before he passed away due to complications of COVID-19 in January 2022.

Deep faith

The world of Baste and older sister Sophia, a chef, is a lot different from the rough and tumble days of their parents who were young adults in the last years of the Marcos dictatorship.

Brady and Editha were journalists in the 1980s with Media Mindanao News Service, which was part of a network of alternative news organizations.

Eco was a finalist in the 1991 Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for her Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism special report, “Married to the M.O.B. (Mail-Order Bride)”. Brady covered conflict and peace-building, and was co-author with Augusto Miclat Jr of the 1990 book, “The Role of Civil Society in the Prevention of Armed Conflict in Southeast Asia”.

Baste’s parents are from a generation that delved into liberation theology, a far cry from the more conservative outlook of Youth for Christ (YFC).

“It’s not that they were turned off by our more activist background. It’s just the context of their lives. They were born in Davao. They grew up there. And later, they lived in Surigao with my parents. The conditions were just different,” his father said. 

When the family reunited after a three-year separation, Sophia was 15, and already a member of YFC. Finding like-minded peers around Switzerland helped ease her homesickness. 

Baste also joined YFC in his teens and the siblings were officers of their chapters.

“I never interposed my views or political beliefs sa kanila (on them). That was also my father’s way. You have to trust your children,” Brady said.

Involvement in the church, he acknowledged, also kept the kids out of trouble.

Baste’s deep faith is seen in his recent Mother’s Day greeting to stepmother, Theresa Angob, where he quotes  Proverbs 31:10, 27-28: “[The Woman Who Fears the Lord ] An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.” 

“Happy Mother’s Day Ma! I love you very much,” he told Theresa.

Brady told Rappler his son is closer to Theresa. 

“They talk more often; they go out, have coffee and long chats. We also talk, but he really opens up to Theresa.” 

Theirs is a successful, blended family and the father included the Angob family in his message of gratitude to those who helped rear the siblings.

Multi-lingual

Baste’s two-month intensive Swiss Guard training included brushing up on his Italian, which he learned in high school. He also took classes in French in high school.

Baste learned English, Bisaya, Surigaonon, and Filipino as a child. 

He speaks fluent German, the language spoken in Bern, plus Berndütsch, a spoken Swiss-German variety that his father never mastered.

When they first arrived in Switzerland, the Eviota siblings had to attend a school for migrants, learning German before moving to regular schools.

“They had Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Tamil schoolmates and that diversity helped them settle quickly and learn the language quickly,” their father said. – Rappler.com