Scar's Master

He is an elderly figure of quiet authority. In the manga and the 2003 anime he sports a black mustache, an unusual touch that set him apart from most Ishvalans, whose hair tends toward white or silver. The 2009 adaptation revised this detail, recoloring his mustache to match the rest of his people.

Master is defined by patience and hard-won wisdom. He does not deny the hatred his pupil carries toward State Alchemists, but he insists it must be endured rather than obeyed, lest it reduce a man to a beast. His outlook is captured in the well-known counsel he offers about becoming the change one hopes to see in the world, a line drawn from Mahatma Gandhi that the wiki notes as one of his most memorable moments.

When the fighting in Ishval ended, teacher and student were parted, and the priest sheltered with other evacuees in southern Amestris before a growing military presence pushed him eastward to avoid clashes. Word of his former student's killings reaches him, and in Chapter 26 he steps before Scar to warn that senseless retaliation only breeds more of the same, feeding an endless cycle. That message stays with Scar and begins to take hold only when he later faces Winry aiming a gun at him over her parents' deaths.

The old priest returns near the climax when Ishvalan refugees are called to join the assault on Central City ahead of the Promised Day. In the 2003 continuity he is instead one of the few to survive the covert operation that sparked the Ishvalan massacre, and he later speaks on behalf of his people at a refugee camp when Mustang and his soldiers come searching for Scar.