# Padre Fernandez — El Filibusterismo character guide

> Padre Fernandez in El Filibusterismo by José Rizal.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0029-xxvii-the-friar-and-the-filipino

## Snapshot

A Dominican friar whose conscience will not let him parrot the party line, he argues with students about whether reform can ever come from within the Church.

## Who they are

Padre Fernandez belongs to the same order that controls the University and the parishes, yet he is willing to sit down with the young men who despise his brethren and hear them out. His honesty cuts both ways: he concedes the abuses of his fellow friars, but he refuses to accept that freedom won by force will ever be anything but a new tyranny. In the charged debates of the novel's middle chapters, he becomes the one priest who treats a Filipino student as a mind worth arguing with, and his uneasy fairness throws the rest of the clergy into sharper relief.

## In the story

### [The Friar and the Filipino](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/el_filibusterismo_se/chapters/xxvii-the-friar-and-the-filipino)

The Dominican friar who listens to Isagani's arguments, shows understanding, and later expresses sorrow for Isagani's radical path.

### [Endnotes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/el_filibusterismo_se/chapters/endnotes)

Invented as a Dominican professor who talks frankly with an Indian, according to Retana.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/el_filibusterismo_se/characters/padre_fernandez
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/el_filibusterismo_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/el_filibusterismo_se/characters