A MUSEUM and what may be considered a spacious reception hall, with a replica of the Blessed Mother, have been added to the Nuestra Señora de Manaoag Shrine, arguably Pangasinan’s most famous religious shrine because of the many miracles attributed to Our Lady of the Holy Rosario.
One account, worthy of Gabriel García Márquez’s magic realism, says that during the drought of 1706, Mama Mary produced miraculous downpours which lasted for days.
The Dominican church, with its impressive interior, dates back to 1772 and was partially destroyed by fire during the 1898 Revolution. When the Dominicans returned in 1901, they rebuilt the transept and the dome, a task which was completed only in 1932.
The exterior of the church has lost its Old World charm, for the bell tower and façade now sport a modernist look. And some portions of the brick walls on the side have been cemented over. We ignore this, and just enter the church to converse briefly with Our Lady of Manaoag.
Our Lady calls
Years ago, on a similar pilgrimage to the shrine, I met a friend of happy memory, Purita Kalaw-Ledesma, who shared: “I am a devotee of Our Lady of Manaoag because she has always granted all my wishes. But one has to have faith.”
Another parish in Pangasinan worth visiting is the church of Labrador, with its new patina of pastel colors. But again, we are confronted with a new belfry out of sync with the Neoclassical style of the façade.
The St. Joseph Cathedral-Parish, under the Diocese of Alaminos, is decked out with the official colors of the province, pastel yellow and gray, and the façade showcases a pantheon of saints: San Juan, San Lucas, San Mateo…
The cathedral has an imposing chocolate-colored retablo (altar backdrop).
Alaminos is one town which has managed to hold on to its heritage despite the onslaught of modernity and tourism (it is home of the Hundred Islands). One can see many ancestral houses in front of the church and plaza.
The high point of the tour organized by the Provincial Information Office, headed by Orpheus M. Velasco (075-542-7030; kokaok77@yahoo.com), on the occasion of Pangasinan’s 431st founding anniversary, was the St. James the Great Church in Bolinao, constructed in 1609 by the Augustinians.
This historical church is now undergoing reconstruction, and one hopes it is that and not renovation. Already, some portions of the façade, with coral stones, have (again) been cemented over. This has happened to many Spanish-era churches in the Philippines, and one wonders if our parish priests are really heritage-conscious.
First Mass?
In front of the church is a marker which pays tribute to Blessed Fr. Odorico, an Italian missionary who, early in the 14th century, traveled to China and, the ship encountering a storm, sought refuge in Santiago Island, Bolinao, the northernmost tip of Pangasinan.
“O glorious Father Odorico,” the monument plaque declared, “you touched our country in your journey to China. May that great nation and all nations open the door to Christ.”
Interestingly, the marker added: “In 1324, Blessed Odorico, after landing in Bolinao, celebrated the first Mass in the Philippines. He also indoctrinated and baptized many of the Malay immigrants in Bolinao.”
(Ambeth Ocampo and Church scholars Fathers Pedro Galende, OSA, and Rene Javellana, SJ, please check this out. I was told that the source is a travel memoir written by Father Odorico, a copy of which is somewhere in the province.)
The pilgrimage made me recall an earlier visit to another grand shrine, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, now a National Cultural Treasure, in Calasiao. It is Baroque-Romanesque in style, pyramid-shaped like the Bolinao shrine, with castle-like finials on the side and a state-of-the-art computerized musical system.
Also well-preserved is the convent house, with its sense of space and scale, redolent of a bygone era. “I met Padre Salvi in the corridor,” quipped SV Epistola, another friend of happy memory.
