in spite of his scruples. Ben-Zayb – A columnist for the Manila Spanish newspaper El Grito de la Integridad. Ben-Zayb is his pen name and is an anagram of Ybáñez, an alternate spelling of his last name Ibáñez. His first name is not mentioned. Ben-Zayb is said to have the looks of a friar, and believes that in Manila they think because he thinks. He is deeply patriotic, sometimes to the point of jingoism. As a journalist, he had no qualms embellishing a story, conflating and butchering details, turning phrases over and over, making a mundane story sound better than it actually was. Father Camorra derisively calls him an ink-slinger. Father Camorra – the parish priest of Tiani. Ben-Zayb's regular foil, he is said to look like an artilleryman in counterpoint to Ben-Zayb's friar looks. He stops at nothing to mock and humiliate Ben-Zayb's liberal pretensions. In his own parish, Camorra has a reputation for unrestrained lustfulness. He drives Juli into suicide after attempting to rape her inside the convent. For his misbehavior he was "detained" in a luxurious riverside villa just outside Manila. Father Írene – Capitán Tiago's spiritual adviser. Along with Don Custodio, Írene is severely criticized as a representative of priests who allied themselves with temporal authority for the sake of power and monetary gain. Known to many as the final authority who Custodio consults, the student association sought his support and gifted him with two chestnut-colored horses, yet he betrayed the students by counseling Custodio into making them fee collectors in their own school, which was then to be administered by the Dominicans instead of being a secular and privately managed institution as the students envisioned. Írene secretly but regularly supplies Capitán Tiago with opium while exhorting Basilio to do his duty. Írene embellished stories of panic following the outlawing of the student association Basilio was part of, hastening Capitán Tiago's death. With Basilio in prison, he then removed Basilio out of Tiago's last will and testament, ensuring he inherited nothing. Placido Penitente – a student of the University of Santo Tomas who had a distaste for study and would have left school if it were not for his mother's pleas for him to stay. He clashes with his physics professor, who then accuses him of being a member of the student association, whom the friars despise. Following the confrontation, he meets Simoun at the Quiapo