REDISCOVERING CATANDUANES
I JUST returned from my home province of Catanduanes where I attended the June 26 installation of the Most Reverend Luisito Audal Occiano of Camarines Sur as the third Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Virac, following the retirement of the Most Reverend Manolo de los Santos after 30 years of devoted service to the Church and people of Catanduanes. Most Rev. Jose C. Sorra, the first bishop of Virac from 1974 to 1993, died in 2021, and his remains now lie inside the beautifully renovated Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Virac.
It was my first trip outside Manila in years, after the pandemic, and it allowed me to rediscover the beauty of my own province. I was born and grew up in its poorest town, and as a teenager took a passenger ship to Manila in search of an education. I worked my way through school, became a journalist, then a Cabinet member and an elective politician. From 1978 to 1984, I represented the province and the Bicol Region at the interim Batasang Pambansa. I then established my residence in Virac and became an active faithful of the diocese.
Established in 1974 from the territory of Legazpi diocese as a suffragan of the metropolitan archdiocese of Caceres, the diocese has helped to keep my close ties with the Catanduanes clergy alive and vibrant. These include Bishop Sorra, whom I first met as a student at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. My seven children spent their summer holidays in Virac and grew up very close to him and his priests.
From Virac, "Mamo" Sorra was elevated to the episcopacy of Legazpi, where he served from 1994 to 2005. After Legazpi, he retired to the neighboring town of Bacacay, in a retreat center called Bethlehem, where he died of respiratory failure in 2021. His remains were interred at the crypt inside the Immaculate Conception cathedral in Virac, but the pandemic prevented me from coming to Virac for the rites. Neither could I come in 2023 when the remains of Cardinal Jose Thomas Sanchez, the fifth Filipino cardinal from Pandan, Catanduanes, and the first Filipino secretary of the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and Prefect of the Congregation of the Clergy in Rome, were transferred to the same cathedral from the Cathedral of Novaliches where they were originally reposed after his death in Quezon City in 2012.
Cardinal Sanchez was a very dear friend. On his personal visits to Manila, he usually stayed as a house guest of Engineer F. F. and Mrs. Lita Cruz in Quezon City, where his other friends gathered to pay their respects. But when Pope St. John Paul II died in 2005, and my wife and I lost our reservation at the Pontificio Collegio Filippino to some members of an official Philippine delegation, the cardinal gave us a room in his apartment to allow us to stay for the duration of the pope's wake and the conclave that elected his successor Pope Benedict XVI. The cardinal also personally accompanied us to pray for hours beside St. John Paul's remains at St. Peter's.
Given everything we owed him, we thought it but fitting to pay our belated filial respects to his blessed memory and Bishop Sorra's at the crypt during this visit. I thought it was also one way of honoring Bishop Occiano's installation. Presided over by the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Charles John Brown and attended by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Manila Jose F. Advincula, Metropolitan Archbishop of Caceres Rex Andrew Clement Alarcon, Archbishop of Lipa Gilbert Armea Garcera, Archbishop Emeritus of Caceres Rolando Tirona, Bishop of Legazpi Joel "Bong" Baylon, Bishop of Libmanan Jose Rojas, and an overflow of the clergy, women religious and laity from Catanduanes, Camarines Sur and other parts of the Bicol Region, the Most Rev. Luisito Audal Occiano of Camarines Sur was thus installed in solemn and moving rites as the third bishop of the Diocese of Virac.
As such, he presides over one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the country, a handiwork of Bishop Emeritus Manolo de los Santos, who devoted the last 30 years to the beautification of the churches of the diocese and the expansion of the clergy.
Catanduanes is composed of 11 municipalities and a population of 271,879, according to its 2020 census. When Bishop Manolo began his ministry, the diocese had 22 parishes; now it has 34. It had but a few diocesan priests, and now it has 87, at least 70 of whom he had ordained. The province has produced more bishops per capita than many other much bigger Philippine provinces; these include Bishop Arnulfo Arcilla of Sorsogon, Bishop Epifanio Surban of Dumaguete, Archbishop Teopisto Alberto of Caceres, Bishop Jose Sorra of Virac and Legazpi, and Cardinal Jose Sanchez of Pandan and the Holy See — all of happy memory.
Previously known as the "island of howling winds" because it lies on the typhoon belt, Catanduanes has acquired the name of "Happy Island," which the Nuncio loves to quote. It is a small island where the Catholic faith is visibly strong. Here, marriages still fail, but you do not hear any wild clamor for absolute divorce.
It has its share of political problems, too. My three-day visit allowed me to talk to people about the wild social media stories about the alleged Chinese "invasion" of Catanduanes that has reportedly reduced the place into a "Chinese enclave within a 'Chinese-dominated' Philippines." But contrary to this libel originating from Manila, the province has not been invaded by the Chinese. Although Gov. Joseph "Boboy" Cua and his brother Vice Gov. Peter Cua are definitely of Chinese descent, they are genuine Filipinos, seriously committed to the progress of the province. They have long deployed their business resources to the province's economic progress.
There is no denying that they constitute the ruling political dynasty of the province, but this is a national problem that begins with the Marcos family in Ilocos Norte, the Duterte family in Davao, the Villar family, the Cayetano family and the Ejercito/Estrada family in the Philippine Senate, and replicated everywhere else by other political families. I'd like to believe that I broke the back of the 30-year-old political dynasty in Catanduanes when I entered Bicol politics in 1978, but my stern refusal to put up my own political dynasty and the absence of an enforceable anti-dynasty law encouraged the new dynasty to surface. We need a thoroughly grounded reform, consecrated by law, to end the continuing idiotization of our politics.
2024-06-30T16:20:33Z dg43tfdfdgfd