(Note: This is the original unedited version of an article I wrote for the October 2012 print edition of Esquire Philippines; the version they did publish was around 950 words shorter. The article is about the circumstances surrounding the canonization in 2012 of a young Filipino man whose existence was barely documented, and whose identity was barely established.)
PRECURSOR IN HEAVEN
Those who are marked as “also among the dead” are barely remembered by history even if they are mourned by their families and duly noted by court records. This is especially true about those incidental casualties, who happened to be with a luminary who meets a violent end. It takes dogged Googling to discover that Jesus Calderon was the also-murdered driver of Sec. Jaime Ferrer, or that Leonor Alay-ay was the also-murdered driver of KMU leader Rolando Olalia. Those ill-fated who died back when journalism did not exist, are doomed to the purgatory of anonymity.
The names and lives of 17th century Filipinos remain largely incognito, except those who had the temerity to rebel against the Spanish crown and were thus recorded in the roster of the executed. The Spanish of Manila were more diligent in writing about their own kind. In the Philippines of 1672, where the Catholic Church was at the center of political and cultural life, the pioneering Spanish Jesuit missionary Diego Luís de San Vitores was a celebrity. The news of his brutal murder was reportedly greeted by Catholics in Manila with “great celebration” – pealing church bells, exultations of the Te Deum – for the Church had earned a martyr who glorified the faith. Fireworks were set off in Madrid when the news finally reached them of the murder of their priest along the shores of the island of Guam, one of the chain of islands which the Spanish called Islas Ladrones.
Also among the dead was San Vitores’ assistant, identified as a Visayan youth named Pedro[1]. Over the next several decades the surviving papers of San Vitores and the other missionaries in Guam were collected, and the testimonies of witnesses to the Spaniard’s life and martyrdom were recorded. These documents made it clear, however vaguely, that San Vitores did not die alone on that Saturday morning of April 2, 1672. Just moments before San Vitores was slain, the same assailants also murdered the assistant named Pedro. As Pedro was being hacked to death, San Vitores raised up a crucifix hanging from his neck to bless his dying “precursor en cielo”.
Nobody in 17th century Manila had bothered to consider that perhaps this indio “Pedro” was worthy of formal honors from the Catholic Church, much less beatification. Beatification, an indispensable requirement for sainthood, would allow the honoree to be honored by a public cult under the title “Blessed”. As early as 1676, the Jesuits of Manila initiated the first request for the beatification of Diego Luis de San Vitores. However, with the suppression of the Jesuits by Spain and other European powers in the 18th century, by the cause for San Vitores was stalled. Only in the late 20th century was the process formally restarted, upon the initiative of the Catholic Church in Guam. A Filipino Jesuit, Fr. Juan Ledesma, was assigned Vice-Postulator for the final Process of the Cause for the Beatification of San Vitores, and it was he who prepared the Positio Super Vita et Martyrio, a printed volume which contains all the materials in connection with the prospective candidate, including all the arguments of the advocates and the Promoter of the Faith.
In 1980s polyglot Vatican City, the idea of jointly beatifying San Vitores and his assistant was proposed. The Postulator-General, Fr. Paolo Molinari, S.J., rejected the idea, reasoning “it might delay the Cause of Fr. Diego”. The Archdiocese of Agana [2] (Guam), wanted San Vitores beatified in time for the 20th anniversary of the creation of the archdiocese. The matter resolved, San Vitores alone was considered for beatification. On October 6, 1985, Blessed Diego Luís de San Vitores was beatified in Rome. The proud delegation from Guam for the beatification ceremonies was led by the Archbishop of Agana, Felixberto C. Flores, the first ever Guam-born bishop who had been the most ardent advocate for San Vitores’ beatification. Flores, who would die just 19 days later following heart surgery, also happened to be an alumni of the Ateneo de Manila whose own Laoag-born father was exiled by Spain to Guam over 200 years after Pedro’s own journey from the Philippines to the Islas Ladrones.
Among those present at the beatification ceremonies was Cardinal Ricardo J. Vidal of the Philippines. Just 3 years earlier, he had been installed as the Archbishop of Cebu. In the course of the beatification process for San Vitores, Vidal had come to learn about the assistant who had accompanied the Spaniard in death. The hazy identifier “Visayan youth” caught his attention. After all, Cebu was in the Visayas. There were then no Filipino Catholic saints, and the only Filipino who had been beatified, Lorenzo Ruiz, was Manila-born.[3]
The right to process the beatification of a martyr belongs to the bishop of the place of martyrdom. In Pedro’s case, Cardinal Vidal secured the permission of the Archbishop of Agana to allow instead the Archdiocese of Cebu to take up the cause of the Visayan youth. Fr. Ledesma prepared an ad hoc Positio for Pedro, using the same documents he had used for the position paper he had prepared for San Vitores. Cardinal Vidal submitted this Positio to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome on September 25, 1993. With this, the formal process for the beatification of “Pedro” had commenced. The Positio prepared by Fr. Ledesma would be rejected by the Vatican as it was “full of errors”, and besides, “literally lifted from” the text of the Positio for San Vitores. This did not deter the cause for Pedro. A new Positio consisting of 224 pages was drafted by Fr. Ildebrando Leyson and completed by April 1998. Based on the Positio, 6 consultor-historians and 9 consultor-theologians of the Vatican unanimously affirmed the martyrdom of Pedro and recommended for his beatification.
On March 5, 2000, the Visayan youth whose surname is invariably identified in 17th century documents as Calonsor, Calongsor, Calangsor or Calansor was beatified by Pope John Paul II and declared as Blessed Pedro Calungsod. On October 21, 2012, he will be canonized as only the second Filipino Catholic saint. His canonization just 19 years after the process for his beatification commenced, was assured by the certification of a miracle attributed to his intercession that occurred at Cebu City in 2003. Blessed San Vitores’ own canonization remains uncertain more than 300 years after the night skies of Madrid exulted over the martyrdom and certain sainthood of Spain’s crossed crusader.
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Whatever records there may have been on Pedro Calungsod independent of the San Vitores documents have not survived time or termites. The established fact that he was killed in Guam on April 2, 1672 attests to that that he was born at all. When and where he was born is not known. The fact that he had been identified in the San Vitores papers as a “Visayan youth” has given rise to a purely speculative biography. He is supposed to have been in his late teens when he died, placing his year of birth in the mid-1650s. His birthplace has been identified as possibly in Molo in Iloilo, Ginatilan in Cebu, Hinundayan or Hinunangan in Southern Leyte, or Loboc in Bohol. The notion that his surname was actually Calungsod (a fairly common Visayan surname), and not Calonsor or its derivatives, is surmised from the fact that Fr. Ignacio Francisco Alcina, a 17th century Spanish missionary who lived in the Visayas, would spell and pronounce “lungsod” as “longsor”.
In the handbook on the life of Pedro[4] published by the Archdiocese of Cebu, Fr. Ildebrando Leyson surmises that Calungsod had been specifically recruited and trained by the Jesuits as a catechist. He would have been educated at a special boarding school for boys where students would live a highly regimented life, but also the basic education mostly denied 17th century youths living under the Spanish crown. There were numerous such schools then in the Visayas, but it is not known where exactly Pedro would have studied, if at all. It is even unknown how Pedro found his way to Luzon, particularly Cavite, on August 7, 1667. On that day, Pedro and San Vitores met up, maybe for the first time, and boarded the vessel that would eventually bring them to the Ladrones. Pedro was just one of several young indios cristianos who would accompany San Vitores in his pioneering mission to the Marianas Islands.
San Vitores had been to the Marianas once before, in 1662. San Vitores, then 34, was on his way to his assignment to the Philippines from Acapulco. A layover in the Marianas, 2,400 kilometers east of the Philippines, was standard for Spanish vessels traversing the famed Manila-Acapulco route. Magellan himself had been the first European to arrive in Guam, in the same voyage that ended with his bludgeoning on the shores of Mactan. Magellan claimed the islands for Spain, naming them Islas de las Velas Latinas[5]. Magellan’s goodwill towards the natives of Guam was very short-lived, as they proceeded to spirit away any loose items of the flotilla they could hold on to. Henceforth, the Spanish dubbed the islands as Islas Ladrones, or “Island of Thieves”. More than a hundred years later, San Vitores was obsessed with Christianizing the thieves of Ladrones, but the civil authorities of Spain were unconvinced by his entreaties for establishing a mission there. San Vitores, the son of a nobleman, used his connections and appealed directly to King Philip IV, grandson of the monarch for whom the Philippines was named in tribute. When the King said yes, a 300-ton galleon was constructed in Cavite for the use of San Vitores. The ship was christened in his honor, the San Diego. The last step Pedro Calungsod (or Calongsor) would take out of Philippine soil would be onto the San Diego.
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When San Vitores came to Guam on June 15, 1668, Spain had just recently laid its formal claim over the Ladrones, rechristening them the Marianas after Mariana of Austria, the recently-widowed Queen of Spain. San Vitores arrived together with 4 other priests, a seminarian, and 31 soldiers or helpers, 12 of whom were Spaniards from Mexico and the remaining 19 were Filipinos. They were to be the first people commissioned to establish a permanent Spanish settlement in Guam. Those who were the very first settlers to Guam were believed to have originated from Southeast Asia, maybe even from the Philippines itself. These indigenous peoples, known as the Chamorros, had Guam all to themselves for nearly 3,500 years. They practiced ancestor worship, venerating ancient spirits known as Taotao Mona and storing the bones of dead family members in their own homes. Notwithstanding the claims of the Spanish crown, the Chamorros were secure in the belief in their dominion over Guam, until San Vitores arrived.
The start of the mission was auspicious enough. By April 1669, a church had been established, and later that year, a school for boys was established, the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. Over 13,000 Chamorros would be baptized into the Catholic faith. Among the converts was a prominent village chieftain by the name of Matapang, from the village of Tumon. Reputedly, after Matapang had been wounded by a lance during a fight, San Vitores tended to the wound, which eventually healed. Matapang, a proud man with a history of violence, would remain ambivalent though about the newly-arrived Christians.
Again, frustratingly little is known about the life of Pedro Calungsod during his 4 years in Guam, excepting the very last day. The existing documents barely single out any achievement, failure or facet attributable to Pedro, except to say that he was to San Vitores, an antiguo companero or buen hijo. San Vitores was apparently very near-sighted, and during his journeys on foot through rough roads, he would tie a cord to his belt and have one of his assistants lead the way, tugging at the cord. Presumably, Pedro shepherded the friar in that manner when it was his turn. Typically, an assistant such as Pedro would carry for the priest those tools of the trade – holy oils, pen and paper for baptismal certificates, and the paraphernalia for celebrating the Mass.
Some of the other Filipinos from the Spanish mission are adverted to in the surviving documents for more ignominious reasons. During the baptism of a prominent villager, it was reported that “the devil entered into [two] Filipinos who accompanied Padre Diego, and like fanatics or infernal furies, they began to make horrible faces and to shout nonsense and absurdities”. One of them attempted to stab San Vitores and instead wounded the head of the Spanish military contingent. Less dramatically, some of the other young Filipino assistants fled the mission, preferring instead to live with the unsubjugated Chamorros. Doubtless, we would not have heard of Pedro Calungsod today had he succumbed to the temptation of freedom.
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It may seem incredible that the Catholic Church is willing to even consider for sainthood someone about whom almost nothing is known about. The paucity of the record is such that it is not entirely impossible that Pedro Calungsod himself was a ladron on the run, a runaway truant who had spat at his father, a lothario who had impregnated the village lass and fled her irate family into the shelter of the local friar. The surviving accounts do allude to him as a lad of immaculate virtue, but these documents do not bear the testimony of those who knew Pedro before he sailed for Guam. In a similar vein, Lorenzo Ruiz (for whom the historical record is similarly vague), was said to have joined up with the Spanish missionaries with whom he would die because he was hiding from the law, having been ”involved in an obscure incident with bloodshed”, as his official Vatican biography puts it. What incident that was, or whether he was actually guilty of a crime is not known with certainty. In Ruiz’s case, he actually abandoned his wife and three children for the mission – and while his putative missionary zeal is worthy of emulation for adherents, his marital vow was after all consecrated under God.
Nine years before Pedro Calungsod met his death, Ignacia del Espiritu Santo was born in Binondo, the daughter of a Chinese migrant and a Filipina. She decided to pursue religious vows, but the Spanish regime prohibited Filipinos from joining religious orders. Undeterred, she occupied a vacant house at the back of the Jesuit headquarters in Manila and lived a monastic life. She soon attracted followers – Filipino lay women who took up vows of chastity and supported themselves through alms and manual labor. Her congregation, the Beatas de la Compania de Jesus, received ecclesiastical approval only in 1732, and final papal approval only in the 20th century. Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, better known today as Mother Ignacia, died in 1748, reportedly while kneeling at the communion rail at the Saint Ignatius Church in Intramuros. The process for her beatification was initiated in 1986 by Cardinal Jaime Sin, Archbishop of Manila. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree super virtutibus declaring Mother Ignacia as a Servant of God who had lived to a heroic degree the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, and thus entitled to the title of Venerable. However, to attain beatification, a miracle attributed to Mother Ignacia must first be confirmed. The Vatican is still currently studying the veracity of the miracle claimed by Victoria Pena-Utanes, a diabetic whose infected foot sore was reportedly cured in a matter of hours after she placed a picture of Mother Ignacia over the wound before wrapping a bandage around it.
From a secular point of view, the difficulties overcome by Mother Ignacia both as a woman and a Filipino during the height of Spanish colonization make her attractive for emulation, maybe even above that of one whose key attribute is the moment of martyrdom. Moreover, it appears unfair that while no initial miracle was required in the case of Pedro Calungsod before he was beatified, one is necessary before Mother Ignacia’s cause can advance. There is an explanation though, perfectly justifiable under Catholic canon law. Mother Ignacia and her cause is deemed as that of a Confessor or non-martyr – one who confesses or bears witness to their faith by living a holy life. The research involved in ascertaining if a prospective saint had lived a holy life will necessarily more thorough, and especially difficult if the candidate died over 200 years ago and there are no living eyewitnesses to that person’s life. As observed by the American religion writer Kenneth L. Woodward, this difficulty in finding corroborating witnesses is especially pronounced in the case of women who were founders of religious orders, as the available testimonies usually attest only to those women’s adherence to their religious vows without much attestation to their lives prior to the cloister.
In contrast, Pedro Calungsod (and Lorenzo Ruiz) was put forth as a martyr – one who died for the faith. In the case of martyrdom, beatification may be clinched by sufficient proof that the martyr had willingly died in odium fidei (out of hatred for faith) or in odium ecclesiae (out of hatred for the Church), . The paucity in facts about the life of Pedro Calungsod matters little for the Catholic Church as long as how and why he died is sufficiently documented. It is unsurprising that beatification and canonization have a systemic bias towards martyrs. Stephen, widely regarded as the Church’s first saint, was also the Church’s first martyr. Not much too is known about his life except the manner of his death by stoning. The first 300 years of the Church is replete with stories of martyrdom, especially in the hands of the Romans. The first five Popes, all of them saints, were reputedly martyred. This includes Saint Peter, the “rock” on whom the Church was founded. The central figure of the Church itself, Jesus Christ, was also executed for his religious beliefs. There are no surviving historical accounts referring to Jesus Christ written during his lifetime or in the first few years after his death. The absence of records has not prevented Jesus Christ from becoming the most influential person who has lived in the last 2000 years.
The matter of miracles also exhibits the Catholic Church’s less rigid attitudes towards martyrdom as a path to sainthood. Posthumous miracles are seen as acknowledgement that the deceased venerable still enjoys the beatific vision of a God willing to suspend the laws of science at his or her behest. Reforms to the canonization process enacted by Pope John Paul II in 1983 reduced by half the number of miracles necessary for beatification or canonization. Miracles are no longer needed as one of the requisites for the beatification of a martyr, but at least one miracle must be attributed to a non-martyr before beatification can be considered. One post-beatification miracle though is required for the canonization of both martyrs or non-martyrs. Despite the relaxation of these requirements, there remain hundreds of beatified Blesseds who remain wanting of the certified miracle that assures them sainthood. Most of them are figures who died hundreds of years ago, figures too obscure today to attain any widespread cult of devotion.
The late Pope John Paul II (Blessed John Paul II since his beatification in May 2011) has been cited as the catalyst in the unprecedented expansion of the roster of saints. Apart from his 1983 reforms to the canonization process, Pope John Paul II ended up naming more saints during his 27-year papacy than all of his 263 predecessors combined – 483 canonizations, as well as 1,340 beatifications. Many of his canonizations lent a multi-cultural sheen to list of saints. Pope John Paul II would name the first ever saints from Brazil, China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It would be fortuitous that the causes of San Vitores and Pedro gained traction during the reign of a Pope with a more modern vision of sainthood.
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The details in articulo mortis of the martyr Pedro Calungsod are narrated, however incidentally, in the same contemporary journals and accounts that heralded the life and martyrdom of Padre Diego San Vitores. The story is disturbing, and not just because it is grisly.
By 1672, four years into the Guam mission, the kumbaya atmosphere had long given way to one of barely-veiled mutual animosity. A rumor that the baptismal waters used in christening infants was poisonous gained traction among the Chamorros after some babies did die shortly after baptism. A drought in 1670 was blamed by Chamorro religious leaders (makahnas) on the Christians. Attempts were made on the lives of some of the priests and their helpers, resulting in several deaths. Then, in 1671, a Chamorro chief in the village of Uroti murdered a priest who, against the chief’s wishes, performed the marriage ceremony between a Spanish soldier and the chief’s daughter. The Spanish soldiers arrested and executed the chief, then burned down the village of Uroti after its residents reacted in anger. A full-scale rebellion by the Chamorros soon erupted, leading to two months of fighting. The uneasy truce that followed lasted for five months, and it would be irrevocably shattered by the murder of San Vitores and Calungsod.
San Vitores’s long-time interpreter, an older Visayan named Esteban, had run away – to live among the Chamorros, it later turned out. There also was an aborted attack on the main Spanish compound in Hagåtña. At that time, San Vitores was in the village of Nisichan, overseeing the construction of a church. When of these incidents, San Vitores ordered the other assistants save for Pedro to return to Hagåtña, which was by now heavily fortified by Spain. San Vitores and Pedro would look for the missing Esteban before heading back to Hagåtña. The Jesuit also planned to perform some baptisms along the route.
On the morning of April 2, 1672, San Vitores and Pedro made their way to the coastal village of Tumon, which was just 11 kilometers away from Hagåtña. Upon their arrival, they learned that a baby girl had just been recently born. The child’s father was Matapang, who was one of the village chiefs of Tumon. San Vitores and Pedro went to see Matapang, intending to see that the child was baptized. The child’s mother consented to her daughter’s baptism, but Matapang refused. Instead, Matapang retorted, the missionaries should go ahead and baptize a skull which he kept inside his house. San Vitores and Pedro decided to wait it out. They gathered the children of the village and started to catechize them. When they noticed that Matapang had left his hut, they went inside and baptized his infant daughter into the Catholic faith.
It is not clear if the child’s mother knew about or consented to this holy act. It is also not certain whether Matapang had already decided to kill the missionaries even before he learned of the surreptitious baptism. What is clear is that on that same Saturday morning at eight in the morning, before San Vitores and Pedro could leave Tumon, they were ambushed along the trail by Matapang and his friend Hirao. The written accounts made it clear that Pedro was attacked first. The most detailed of these accounts narrate that Matapang “hur[led] at [Pedro] many spears which, with movements to the body, [Pedro] was able to evade.” But only for a moment. Pedro was struck in the chest and forced to the ground. Hirao then split Pedro’s head open with a catana. Matapang and Hirao then turned their attention to San Vitores. The priest reportedly exclaimed “God have mercy on you, Matapang!” before Hirao’s catana smashed into his skull.
The formal investigation into the cause of a proposed martyr inquires into the reasons behind the defining murder. A martyr after all could not have been killed for reasons not having to do with the Catholic faith. This line of inquiry had engendered some controversial cases during the papacy of John Paul II, as he was confronted with the causes of martyrs killed by the Nazis during the Second World War. Titus Brandsma, a Dutch priest, journalist and anti-Nazi activist, was sent to his death at Dachau after the Dutch Catholic Church refused to run Nazi propaganda in the newspapers they operated. He was beatified as a martyr in 1985 despite arguments that he was killed not for his faith, but for his political opposition towards the Nazis.
The case of Edith Stein proved much more controversial, especially among Jews. Born to Jewish parents in Germany, Stein entered adulthood as an atheist philosopher who nonetheless found herself increasingly drawn to the writings of St. Teresa of Avila. Baptized a Catholic at age 34, she joined the Carmelites in 1933. Her Jewish birth compromised her safety in Germany as the Nazis consolidated power, and by 1938, she would take up residence at a Carmelite convent in Holland. The anti-Nazi stance of the Dutch Church after the invasion of Holland would doom Catholics of Jewish descent. Edith Stein, now Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, was deported to Auschwitz were she was immediately gassed together with her sister and 300 other baptized Jews. Initially considered for beatification as a non-martyr (for her heroic virtues), the difficulty in procuring a miracle soon led to a movement for Edith Stein’s designation as a martyr, her advocates arguing that her extermination was an act of retaliation against the anti-Nazi Catholic hierarchy of Holland. When her beatification was announced in 1987, it provoked an uproar, especially from Jews who questioned why she was being singled out for veneration among the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust. Moreover, it had been her Jewish birth and not her Catholic faith which led to her execution. These concerns did not deter Pope John Paul II, who would in 1998, preside over the canonization of Edith Stein.
When the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints deliberated on the case of Pedro Calungsod, they had to consider whether Hirao was duly motivated by hatred of the Catholic faith when he killed the putative martyr. The available documents did suggest that Hirao was initially reluctant to team up with Matapang on that morning, yet the eventual conclusion was that “even if Hirao was only an instrument of Matapang, his killing of a Servant of God would have constituted an act of murder fulfilling at the least the motivating odium fidei of Matapang.” The Congregation also considered whether the account of Pedro trying to evade Matapang’s spears somehow indicated a vitiated willingness to die for the faith. Sensibly, the Congregation concluded that Pedro’s efforts at non-violent resistance were reasonable under the circumstances.
The more sensitive concern deliberated upon by the Congregation centered on the fact that San Vitores, assisted by Pedro, baptized Matapang’s daughter against her father’s wishes – actions which would seem intolerant or disrespectful of the Chamorros, now if not then. As recounted in Fr. Leyson’s handbook on Pedro Calungsod, one of the consultor-theologians defended the missionaries’ act, reasoning:
“It would be a plain anachronism to apply that period in history the criteria that are very widespread today regarding religious tolerance. And a religious tolerance that absolutely excludes the teaching of the Gospel anywhere would be an extreme irenism. Saint Augustine reminded pastors about their duty to preach against any complacency and above every hostility, thereby condemning every negligence or compromise and reaffirming the apostolic duty of pastors. Jesus himself commanded his disciples to preach the Gospel of salvation to everyone through a parable wherein the Master said to his servants, “Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full.”
Fr. Leyson himself points out that San Vitores and Calungsod should be understood in the context of the prevailing aphorism of that era, Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the Church, there is no salvation.
The murder of San Vitores in particular effectively doomed the relative independence and way of life of the Chamorros. Despite the entreaties of the remaining Jesuits, the Spanish soldiers retaliated with brute force, especially after more troops (including the very first horse seen in Guam) arrived to reinforce the military presence. Tumon would be burned to the ground. Among the first of the Chamorros killed by the Spanish in retaliation for San Vitores’s death was Hurao[6], one of the warrior chiefs of Hagåtña. The year before, he had led the Chamorros in their unsuccessful two-month rebellion against the foreigners. Hurao’s speech to his people then is venerated in Guam, an echo of the sovereignty desired by conquered peoples.
The Europeans would have done better to remain in their own country. We have no need of their help to live happily. Satisfied with what our islands furnish us, we desire nothing else. The knowledge which they have given us has only increased our needs and stimulated our desires. They find it evil that we do not dress. If that were necessary, nature would have provided us with clothes. They treat us as gross people and regard us as barbarians. But do we have to believe them? Under the excuse of instructing us, they are corrupting us. They take away from us the primitive simplicity in which we live.
They dare to take away our liberty, which should be dearer to us than life itself. They try to persuade us that we will be happier, and some of us had been blinded into believing their words. But can we have such sentiments if we reflect that we have been covered with misery and illness ever since those foreigners have come to disturb our peace?
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The Spaniards reproach us because of our poverty, ignorance and lack of industry. But if we are poor, as they claim, then what do they search for here? If they didn't have need of us, they would not expose themselves to so many perils and make such great efforts to establish themselves in our midst. For what purpose do they teach us except to make us adopt their customs, to subject us to their laws, and lose the precious liberty left to us by our ancestors? In a word, they try to make us unhappy in the hope of an ephemeral happiness which can be enjoyed only after death.
By 1678, scorched-earth tactics were being employed by Spanish forces. The Chamorros who resisted were killed, and their children baptized. More Spanish colonists arrived, carrying diseases which further decimated the Chamorro population. By 1698, the Spanish crown was in full control of the Marianas Islands. It is estimated that for every Christian killed, 100 or more Chamorros would die during the Spanish-Chamorro Wars. One estimate placed the population of the Chamorros in 1668 at around 30,000. By 1700, only 3,678 Chamorros remained alive.
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It has been over 300 years since the people of the Marianas last enjoyed independence from a foreign power. During the years the islands were under Spain’s rule, it was a favored destination for those Filipinos exiled from their homeland by the Spanish – Melchora “Tandang Sora” Aquino was one notable example. Guam, the largest of the Marianas Islands, was ceded by Spain in 1898 to the United States under the Treaty of Paris, the same document that handed over the Philippines to American sovereignty. The following year, the remaining islands were sold by Spain to Germany, which in turn ceded control to the Japan following World War I. The Americans seized these islands from Japan after World War II, and renamed them the Northern Marianas Islands. NMI and Guam today remain two distinct territories under the administration of the United States – among the last remaining colonies in the world.
Tourism now ranks as the main revenue source of Guam’s economy. Among the several hotels that dot the island is the Guam Reef Hotel, located in Tumon, conveniently situated near the beach. The hotel overlooks the spot where in 1672, Diego San Vitores and Pedro Calungsod were slain. On that spot, a monument was erected – sculptures commemorating the moment of martyrdom. San Vitores is depicted as kneeling as he baptizes Matapang’s child, his face serene. His killers, Matapang and Hirao, are standing beside him, poised to strike. The child’s mother is kneeling at the side, her hands clasped in genuflection. Pedro Calungsod is absent from that monument.
In 1999, among the thousands of tourists who visited Guam was a group of Filipino Catholic clergy, led by Cardinal Vidal. The beatification was a year away, and they wanted to embark on a pilgrimage to the land which made Pedro Calungsod holy. Among the pilgrims was Fr. Jose Quilongquilong, a Jesuit priest from Cebu who had collaborated with the advocates for Pedro’s beatification. The group sailed out into the waters of Tumon Bay, where the bodies of San Vitores and Calungsod had been sunk by their killers, and where Cardinal Vidal now scattered sampaguita blooms in their memory. On the shore, Fr. Quilongquilong could not help but scoop up grains of sand from the beach where the martyrs had been hacked dead. At the airport, security officers noticed the bottle of sand and interrogated Fr. Quilongquilong. A souvenir, Fr. Quilongquilong explained, I love your beaches so much! The officers waved him through, and upon returning to the Jesuit House inside the Ateneo de Manila campus, Fr. Quilongquilong sprinkled the sand underneath the altar of the Oratory of St. Ignatius, a chapel located at the Ateneo de Manila campus, inside the Loyola House of Studies .
Pedro Calungsod will be canonized as a saint in 2012. After beatification, a person may become eligible for canonization if a miracle is attributed through her or his intercession. On March 26, 2003, at a Cebu City hospital, a middle-aged businesswoman (whose identity has remained anonymous so far) lapsed into a coma following heart surgery. The doctors thought the case hopeless, and even if she awoke, they assumed she would be reduced to a vegetative state. One of the doctors then uttered a prayer to Calungsod, asking him to intercede for the healing of the patient. Within a few hours, the patient awoke, with no signs of impairment or damage to her organs. The claimed miracle was investigated by a diocesan tribunal constituted by Cebu Archdiocese, as well as a local panel of doctors. The results of these investigations were then forwarded to the Vatican City, for study by another panel of theologians and doctors. On all levels, the conclusion reached was that a miracle indeed had occurred.
The efforts of the Archdiocese of Cebu to promote the Visayan youth proved equally indispensable to his canonization. His beatification in 2000 paved the way for his formal veneration as a Servant of God with the title of Blessed. An official portrait painted by Rafael del Casal was unveiled, as well as a five-foot tall image carved in Paete, and paraded on a carroza during the first fiesta in his honor. Among the devotional activities staged in Pedro’s honor was a 1995 stage musical, Scenes From a Martyrdom[7], which highlighted his virtues as a youth evangelist who sacrificed his life because of his faith. Among the sponsors of Scenes From A Martyrdom was a Cebu City doctor who, sometime later, remembered Pedro Calungsod as he stood beside his hopeless comatose patient. The Archdiocese of Cebu had installed a shrine inside the Archbishop’s compound, where a notice was posted inviting those who received favors from Calungsod to report these to Fr. Leyson, the Postulator. It was the doctor who duly reported the miracle. While other miracles were reported to Fr. Leyson, he chose to focus on this miracle as it evinced an immediate and permanent healing which could not be explained scientifically. So now, Pedro Calungsod will become Saint Pedro, entitled to a universal devotion. On account of his youth and status as a catechist and migrant worker, it is likely that his official patronships will be along those fields.
The cause for sainthood of Diego Luis San Vitores, Blessed since 1985, remains stalled despite the efforts of the Archdiocese of Agana. Unlike Pedro Calungsod who has so far received unambiguous support from Filipino Catholics, San Vitores remains a controversial figure in Guam. Its inhabitants remain heavily Catholic – over 85% according to one account – and it was San Vitores who introduced the faith into the island. Yet Guam is also 100% non-independent, and it was San Vitores’s arrival which signalled the end of the islanders’ right to self-determination, as glossed with mass death. As the author Robert F. Rogers of the University of Guam has written, “[f]rom the point of view of the Chamorros, [San] Vitores brought to them a bewildering and lethal psychodrama of the forgiving church and the intolerable military. His martyrdom would bring enduring benefits in the conversion of the people to Christianity, but it would also bring them massive tragedy through wars and epidemics.. Even today, [there] are devout Catholic Chamorros who are still undecided whether San Vitores was a villain, one of the horsemen of their apocalypse, or a hero, the man who brought them God’s grace.”
This ambivalence may render it difficult in Guam to muster the cult of devotion necessary to produce miracles of intercession. It has been hinted that the miracle that would secure the sainthood of San Vitores might be derived in the Philippines instead of Guam, where the devotion for such a controversial figure in the island’s history might be less than hearty. There is precedent for outsourcing to the Philippines the devotions to non-Filipino would-be saints. In 2007, Marie-Eugénie de Jésus, a French nun who founded the Religious of the Assumption (i.e., the Assumption Sisters) was canonized. The authenticated miracle that secured her canonization occurred to Risa Bondoc, a Filipino child who has been able to walk, talk and live a normal life despite having been born with a bisected brain which has remained unfused. A Philippine Catholic youth organization, the Confraternity of Catholic Saints, is intensely promoting the causes of two 20th century lay activists: Blessed Ivan Merz of Croatia and Blessed Alberto Marvelli of Italy. The Confraternity’s founder, Dave Caesar Dela Cruz, has been appointed as the Vice-Postulator for the cause of Merz’s canonization.The notion that it will require the efforts of the indio Church to elevate San Vitores to sainthood is a bemusement of history. Once again, Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores is in need of a Filipino assistant.
[1]
In the Spanish documents at least; depending on the language of the documents, he was also known as “Petrus”, “Pierre” or “Petro”.
[2]Agana, the village which has long served as the capital of Guam, was renamed Hagåtña in the 1990s. However, the Archdiocese itself has retained the use of Agana.
[3]
Lorenzo Ruiz would be canonized in Saint Peter’s Square by Pope John Paul II on October 18, 1987.
[4]
Pedro Calonsor Bisaya
: Prospects of a Teenage Filipino (2000 ed.)
[5]
“Islands of the Lateen Sails”, so named after Magellan was greeted by hundreds of small speedy canoes.
[6]
No known relation to Hirao.
[7]
Words and music by Fr. Rudy Villanueva.
References:
Pedro Calonsor Bisaya, Prospects of a Teenage Filipino. Rev. Ildebrando Leyson, Claretian Publications,
1999.
Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam. Robert F. Rogers, University of Hawaii Press, 1995.
A History of Guam. Lawrence J. Cunningham, Janice J. Beaty. Bess Press, 2001.
Special thanks to Fr. Jose Quilongquilong, SJ.