Jesuits and Recollects in Mindanao in the 19Th Century1

Jesuits and Recollects in Mindanao in the 19th Century1 Would that I were here to talk about the Jesuits and Recollects in the 20th century when relationships have never been so good! Spanish Recollect superiors really took a bow before the Jesuit brand of education. Consider how Fr. Simeón Asensio—and Fr. Germán Chicote after him— would go to San Jose Seminary of the Society of Jesus in Quezon City every Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning of the school year to fetch all those fine young Filipino seminarians of the Augustinian Recollect Order, who were then being trained by the Jesuits, and bring them all to San Sebastian Convent in the late fifties and early sixties. You have Fr. Emeterio Buñao, Fr. Hubert Dunstan Decena, Fr. Pedro Escanillas among you, to attest to that. Recall the closeness and camaraderie of the Sacred Heart Jesuits and the University of San Jose-Recoletos religious in Cebu City. Quite aware am I of how the Jesuits dealt with the Recollects in return in our century. I know of an old Jesuit priest, assigned for quite some time in Sacred Heart School of Cebu City and presently an Ateneo chaplain, who never said mass whenever he was in Madrid in any church in the Spanish capital, except in Santa Rita parish church along Gaztambide, which belongs to the Augustinian Recollects. It was probably because the Jesuit priest lived just across the street along Cea Bermudez, a stone’s throw from Santa Rita, but more because of his closeness with those Recollects he had met in Cebu City. I learnt later that the Sacred Heart School solely for Chinese boys first opened its classes at the classrooms of Colegio de San Jose-Recoletos and the Jesuits resided the Recollect convent. I also know an Ateneo school administrator who used to come to our home to meet his Johnny Walker and I, with my imbibed Spanish traits and culture, would have my own Carlos III or Fundador and we spent the night 1*A lecture delivered at the National Conference on Recoletos 400: History, Legacy and Culture, at San Sebastian College-Recoletos, Manila, Philippines, on 3 December 2004. discussing both important and trivial matters, of course, not necessarily related to history at all. I have nothing against the Jesuits of course. It’s hard and excruciating, though, to delve into the past and talk about the Jesuits and Recollects in Mindanao in the 19th century without the rancor there was in the context of history. But we have to do this in order to clarify gray areas of research on the controversy that was most crucial in Philippine history. It was fortunate for me that in August 2002 I delivered a lecture before students and faculty, mostly from the Department of European Languages, on the two unpublished letters of Fr. Pedro Peláez on the secularization controversy. It was at the audio-visual room of our Department, Bulwagang Rizal, University of the Philippines-Diliman. The professorial chair lecture was a result of my research in 1997 in Sevilla and Madrid, Spain where I was given a beca hispanista [Hispanist research scholarship] by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to do some extensive research on Baler, Tayabas, now part of Aurora province, [in the stone church of Baler the last of the Spanish troops dug in for almost a year not knowing that the war was long over], and on other favorite topics related to Hispanic research: Bohol, San Sebastian Church, Cavite, Recollect legacy and culture. On the topic of the Jesuits and Recollects in Mindanao in the 19th century, therefore, I know whereof I speak. During those almost three months of stay in Marcilla (Navarra), Madrid and Sevilla, I discovered two letters—actually, a whole dossier of letters and other communications—penned by Fr. Pedro Peláez, the governor general, the assessor as well as two letters of the Augustinian Recollect archbishop of Manila José Aranguren. You have to bear in mind that after this Recollect archbishop died, his secretario capitular de cámara y de gobierno Pedro Peláez became the vicar capitular of the Archdiocese of Manila sede vacante. You have to bear in mind too that Fr. Peláez eventually adopted many ideas and policies of the Recollect Archbishop José Aranguren on the secularization issue. When the Franciscans wanted to grab a parish here in Sampaloc, the Recollect archbishop adamantly opposed the move, saying: “No, this parish belongs to the secular clergy.” When the Recollect confreres wanted to grab a parish in Cavite, and they were able to get it eventually owing to the governor general’s order, the Recollect archbishop in a letter of the voluminous dossier, where the letters of Fr. Peláez were also found, said: “No, my Recollect confreres (he was a Recollect too), you have no right to get the parishes in Cavite because they rightfully belong to the secular clergy.” So, where did Fr. Peláez get such pro-secular clergy ideas, his love and support to the cause of the Filipino secular clergy? No doubt from the Recollect archbishop of Manila. I am not trying to denigrate Fr. Peláez and his unsullied reputation, his struggle for the rights of the secular clergy, but we got to put the controversy from some perspective. He acquired for sure his ideas from the friar archbishop of Manila, and this archbishop was a Recollect, of whom Peláez was his secretary. We got to give credit where credit is due. Some brilliant ideas and great deeds of defending the rights of the Filipino secular clergy did originate from friars. Let’s go back to history now, meaning, let’s talk about the chronology of events. On 26 November 1857 the Dominican bishop of the Diocese of Cebu—the jurisdiction of Cebu included Marianas, Mindanao and the Visayas—Msgr. Romualdo Jimeno asked Madrid to have the newly restored Society of Jesus assigned to Mindanao. [Surigao and Misamis were to remain under Recollect jurisdiction.] According to the Recollect sources basing on the Novísima Recopilación de Indias, there was no due process. Why? Because Bishop Jimeno did not consult the Recollects who would be most upset with the dispossession of Mindanao parishes, who would be most affected by his request for Jesuit replacements. Remember when the Jesuits left Mindanao, they only had a handful of chaplaincies or mission stations where Spanish garrisons were located. So when the Jesuits were given Mindanao a century later, the Recollects in Madrid and Manila moved heaven and earth not be dispossessed of their twenty-seven parishes in Mindanao. When the powers-that-be refused to see their side, the Recollects simply complied with the royal order. And the Recollects’ main point of contention: no due process at all. They were not consulted neither by the bishop of Cebu, nor by the governor general in Manila, nor by the Spanish Overseas Minister in Madrid. And where would you send all these twenty-seven Recollect priests who would be thereafter jobless? Where would you assign them? So the Recollects kept on harping on the argument that there was no due process. If you read carefully the dossier of notes and letters in the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid (I think there were more than 70 manuscript pages. I had to copy all of them by hand because that was in 1997 and I had no laptop computer). The ideas of Fr. Pedro Peláez were quoted, patterned or literally lifted from Archbishop José Aranguren’s two letters. Aranguren in one of his letters also defended his Filipino secular priests, when asked by the Spanish governor general: “What are those priests doing there in Cavite? Are they doing some revolutionary activities?” The good archbishop said no. His priests were simply doing their job, going about with their pastoral tasks. Let me likewise comment on that oft-repeated phrase, la perla de los curatos that has now become a cliché we can find in almost any historical account or in any major history book whose author anyway copied one another’s idea or account. They say that when the parish priest of Antipolo passed away, they at once attached la perla de los curatos to Antipolo, if you know what that means. It means the pearl of the curacies which was deemed as the richest parish of the country, maybe up to the present (but, of course, there is that of Baclaran, teeming with countless people every Wednesday). Why do historians have to put the tag la perla de los curatos every time the death of the secular parish priest of Antipolo is mentioned. It is sadly understood that the Recollects immediately grabbed la perla de los curatos. The parish grab was done in exchange for some god-forsaken parish of Isabela in Basilan, now horrendously terrorized by the notorious Abu Sayyaf Group. These historians or history book authors in question have not read at all the letters of the Recollect prior provincial Fr. Juan Félix de la Encarnación to Fr. Peláez because they have not read the available Historia general de la Orden de los Agustinos Recoletos of Fr. Manuel Carceller. Fr. Juan Félix de la Encarnación did not immediately send a terna for the governor general to choose a parish priest for the Antipolo vacancy. Later on, Fr. Peláez begged him not do it. Fr. Juan Félix was all too cautious. He was sensitive to the delicate situation in the Philippines. Fr. Juan Félix was very much aware and even said so in a letter he wrote to Fr. Guillermo Agudo in Madrid on 19 February 1862: “There are many vacant parishes around, but I don’t make any move up to now.

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