 |
| Carigara church during the war |
The
Carigara mission where the five Jesuits[i]
began their evangelization work in 1595 was not exactly virgin territory. Years
earlier, the Augustinian Fr. Alonso Velasquez, who was assigned to Leyte in
1580, was reported to have visited the place and the settlements of Barugo,
Leyte-Leyte, Palo and Dulag, villages which the Jesuits had targeted. Though
his visits to these towns may have been few and far between, Velasquez built a
small chapel in the ancient site of Carigara in Binong-tuan, a settlement close
to the riverbanks upstream. Another Augustinian, Fr. Sancho Maldonado, assisted
him, but died on June 29, 1592, three years before the Jesuits came. The visits
of Fr. Velasquez stopped when the Jesuits arrived.[ii]
According
to Fr. Agustin Maria de Castro, it was also the Augustinian Velasquez who
started a mission in Dulag before even the Jesuits came, establishing a school
and a church there.[iii]
Chirino
and his companions landed in northern Leyte, near the village of Carigara in
the morning of 16 July, the day on which the feast of the Exaltation of the
Holy Cross was celebrated in Spain. The priests said mass on the beach and
Brother Garay received Holy Communion. They erected a cross to mark the day and
place of their landing, and proceeded on foot to Carigara, presumably a site
farther from where they landed, where they were welcomed by Cristobal de
Trujillo, encomendero of the region.
Apparently he was a descendant of the first encomendero of Carigara,
Juan de Trujillo, who was awarded the encomienda by the conquistador Miguel
Lopez de Legazpi in 1571.
Trujillo
at once called an assembly of the people and surrounding villages to announce
the arrival of the missionaries and arrange for the construction of a residence
for them. There was already a chapel in the town, which would do as temporary
church. Leaving del Campo, Flores and Garay at Carigara to study Visayan and
organize catechism classes, Chirino and Pereira sailed east and then south
along the coast of the island to find a place for a second mission station.[iv]
Returning two weeks later, they were pleasantly surprised to see their house
already finished, after many of Trujillo’s subjects worked on it ‘with
incredible haste.’[v]
On
the second week of August, he and Fr. Pereira
were ordered by the Jesuit
Vice-Provincial Antonio Sedeño to proceed to Cebu, while Frs. Juan del Campo
and Cosme de Flores remained and undertook the study of the native language
‘with great fervor.’[vi]
Said, Chirino, ‘the post at Carigara was the first
where the society began the mission villages of this province. It was there that we said the first mass, and
celebrated the first feast with great solemnity in honor of the holy cross.
There too occurred the first baptism, when with my own hands …as a beginning to
this new Christian community, I baptized a goodly number of children already
capable of reason. ‘
 |
| Blood pressure monitor |
[i]
Frs. Pedro Chirino, Antonio Pereira, Juan del Campo, Cosme de Flores and
Brother Gaspar Garay
[ii] “Carigara,
in hoc signo vincis,” Leyte 400 years of Evangelization, A souvenir program
published by the Archdiocese of Palo in July 1995
[iii] Artigas, pp. 271-272. But According to Bishop
Salazar, “It has never had, and
has not now, any instruction.” [Relation
by Salazar, 1588-1591, Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander
Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493
– 1803, Volume VII, P. 47]
[iv]
Op cit, de la Costa, p. 146
No comments:
Post a Comment