Expansion

Evidently, the baptism of new-born infants was not practiced here.  It was customary for the Jesuit missionaries to provide religious instructions first to the catechumens before baptizing them.  In this task, Frs. Juan del Campo and Cosme de Flores devoted themselves. In the process, they also learned the language of the natives ‘in a very short time, especially Fr. Cosme who spoke it with masterly skill.’ When Fr. Del Campo was assigned to Dulag, he was replaced by a newcomer, Fr. Mateo Sanchez. ‘Both pursued their task of winning souls for Christ so attracting people that soon in Carigara, a flourishing Christian church began to appear,’ wrote Chirino.[i]  

When Encinas took charge of the mission in Carigara with Brother Alonso del Brazo as his companion, the mission expanded to three other villages: Leyte, Barugo and Samputan. Encinas and Del Barco visited all four every month. During their stay in each village, daily mass was followed by Catechetical instruction in the church. Encinas, taking his cue from Chirino, put the principal truths of the creed and several hymns into the verse of the traditional Visayan folk songs. These achieved instant popularity, especially at Carigara, where they sang Encinas’ composition not only at mass but in their houses in the evening. Encinas also started a day school for boys at Carigara, with a Filipino schoolmaster who taught reading, writing and music. By 1597, two-thirds of the population had received baptism.[ii]

The chapel built in the 1580s at Binongtuan by Augustinian Fr. Alonso Velasquez was replaced with a bigger structure under Frs. Chirino, del Campo and Flores, but this was completed during the time of Frs. Sanchez and Encinas, the second batch of missionaries after that of Chirino.  A major renovation of the same church started in 1605 and completed in March 1608, when Fr. Alonso Rodriguez was the rector of the Carigara residence. At that time, it was said to be the biggest and most beautiful in the islands. However, a month later, on April 7, 1608, it was burned down along with the Jesuit residence during the Muslim raid led by Rajahs Buisan and Mura.

After the raid, the Jesuits and the civil authorities persuaded the residents to transfer the town site north nearer to the coast. Later the people began settling down at a place called Punong, and the missionaries under Fr. Luis Gomez directed the construction of a new church in 1608 on the spot where Chirino and the pioneers planted the cross in 1595.[iii]

[i] Ibid, p. 284

[ii] Op cit, de la Costa, p. 161

[iii] Op cit, “Carigara….”
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