Chapter Five

The town of San Juan Bautista, which Father Enrique served as the solitary priest, was not a large place. Although designated a town it was little more than an over-sized village, of no importance politically, commercially, or militarily. Life generally passed it by. This might have been a source of regret to its few affluent citizens but in these troubled times its inhabitants, rich and poor alike, were grateful that it remained remote from the violent conflicts that had troubled their country over so many years, first with the Spanish, now with the Americans. In San Juan it was not necessary to declare yourself for the freedom fighters, if they had your support, or against the bandits, if you supported the American administration in Manila. The war against the Spanish had taken its toll of young men and people were glad that the new war against the Americans had taken few of their sons. The freedom fighters, or bandits, operated from somewhere in the many mountains of the province and both they and the Americans left San Juan in the peace of its unimportance.

Strictly speaking San Juan was too small to justify its own full-time priest. The majority of the clergy serving in the Philippines were European missionaries and always in short supply as the centre and north of the country had become almost wholly Catholic under Spanish rule. Swathes of the population, especially the rural population, had to go without Mass or the sacraments for extended periods of time or go to the trouble and expense of travelling to one of the bigger centres for baptism, marriage, or any other dispensation of Holy Mother Church. Yet despite this privation, or perhaps because of it, the people stubbornly stuck to their Catholic faith. Apart from the general problem of clergy the upkeep of the church, providing a priest, maintaining his house, paying a housekeeper and a sacristan, were all a drain on limited Diocesan funds and seen by many senior clergy as an unnecessary drain.

The Bishop in Manila bowed to this pressure and usually allowed the town to be served from a larger neighbour as and when its priest felt he could or should attend to the needs of San Juan’s faithful. However, San Juan’s church was an exceptionally fine one from the early colonial days. It had been built to reflect the optimism and ambition of the first Spanish who had settled there. Both the optimism and the ambition, however, proved to be sadly misplaced. The town grew on the wealth of its new colonial inhabitants, then, as the first two or three generations passed, the money began to dry up, building stopped, and the town began the process of fading into the backwater that it still was today. But the church remained a fine example of early colonial exuberance and the present Bishop in Manila had a fondness for the building because over the centuries it had become something very rare: a hardly altered church from the earliest colonial period. Over the years priests and people of churches in more favoured locations had removed, replaced, or covered over original features with whatever pious images were in vogue at the time.

The current bishop had always tried, whenever possible, to see that San Juan had its resident priest to ensure the fabric and interior of the church be properly maintained and not fall into decay or, worse still, be ‘improved’. But European missionary priests, sent by their religious orders, were understandably unwilling to come several thousand miles to spend their vocations as curators of a building, no matter how fine or rare. Before the young priest, Father Enrique O’Mara, had come to San Juan it had been without a resident priest for eight years.

Father Enrique’s rather precipitate elevation to parish priest was, in part, a reflection of the troubled times of the country and the Church. Staunchly Protestant in outlook, the American Administration was not sympathetic to Catholic influence, wealth, and power. They were particularly unhappy with the amount of land and property owned by the Church. It was a time of change and transition and one in which leadership on both sides needed to move carefully and, if possible, in some sort of harmony. The Church could not fight the Americans but nor could the Americans afford to fight the Church as it would mean fighting the whole population, with the exception of the Muslims in the extreme south who had successfully resisted Spanish attempts at conversion and remained loyal to Islam. Filipinos in the south fought both the Spanish and Americans quite independently of the rest of the country.

The present bishop in Manila was not an especially worldly man as Roman Catholic prelates went. Indeed, among his fellow bishops he was considered somewhat overly pious in the habits of his lifestyle, but as bishop of Manila and senior Catholic prelate he realised that whatever his personal preferences he had both social and political responsibilities which he could not avoid especially in these difficult, troubled times. What he needed around him were clergy whom he could trust politically and rely on socially. The choice was not so plentiful that any promising young candidate could be overlooked. In addition to his many other concerns and responsibilities the bishop was aware that a considerable number of his flock, including indigenous clergy, supported the movement for independence and, if the truth were known, he himself was sympathetic to this cause. But the Church had to live with the present reality. The Americans now administered the Philippines and did so legally by treaty with Spain, and they backed up their position with considerable military force. Since the introduction of the Sedition Act by Governor General Taft not only armed opposition but any form of opposition to United States rule, however expressed, was a criminal offence punishable by hanging. The Sedition Act might be flaunted openly in villages in the mountainous areas where the revolutionaries held sway but Manila was the seat of American power with the Bishop’s Palace not so very far from the American Governor General’s residence. The main US army barracks, if he ever needed a reminder of who ruled his country, was also not so very far away.

Father Enrique O’Mara had come to the bishop’s attention as a young priest who was deemed politically safe: that is, he had never been known to express any political opinion whatsoever. In addition he mixed socially with the better elements of Manila society and seemed to be on comfortable terms with any senior Americans with whom he came in contact. Lastly, but by no means least, he was the son of a good Spanish family who had seen to it that he had ample private means. The bishop had kept an eye on him and when a high-level meeting between the top American administrators and senior Philippine politicians was convened in the Catholic church of Pasig he sent Father O’Mara as his official observer. His judgment of Father Enrique proved sound. The young priest proved himself both able and accomplished in mixing among the various exalted notables who made up what became known as the First Philippine Commission. In fact the Monsignor who was in charge of the church was so impressed he requested that the Bishop allow Father Enrique to leave his present position as a junior curate in a central Manila parish and become his assistant priest and secretary. It was just the sort of promotion the bishop would have wished for the young man and he readily agreed.

Everyone saw that Father Enrique was now marked for a bright, even glowing, future. He had brains, spoke fluent English, was possessed of an outwardly pious disposition, and had civilised manners combined with ease and charm when moving in society, whether Philippine or American. In short, everything a bishop could wish for in his own secretary. All that was lacking was a little experience.

Father Enrique was a success in Pasig as both priest and secretary and after three years was summoned to the Bishop’s Palace where the bishop himself told him he was appointed parish priest of San Juan Bautista. The bishop went on to make it clear that although San Juan was small, insignificant, and out of the way, it would give him the necessary experience of being a parish priest. If he did as well in San Juan as he had done in Pasig then before too long he would be rewarded with a position in Manila more suitable to the talent and promise he had so far shown. Father Enrique didn’t need to have it spelled out that the position would be that of bishop’s secretary, an appointment which usually marked the holder as a man destined for higher office, even one day becoming a bishop himself.

Father Enrique arrived in San Juan full of zeal and at once began to show his flock and the bishop what he was capable of. He set about expunging the backlog of omissions which had built up while the town had been left without a priest. He earned the respect and admiration of the people by the long hours he spent in the Confessional hearing and absolving the years’ accumulation of his parishioners’ sins, by the number of times he officiated at the holy water font baptising and at the altar regularising the status of men and women through a long series of nuptial weddings. This hard work was especially appreciated by the poorer element of the town who, in the absence of a resident priest and unable to afford the city prices for the sacraments of Holy Mother Church, had muddled through as best they could, pairing off, having children, and dying with no more than the blessings and prayers of friends and relatives to implore God’s mercy and understanding.

When all those in San Juan who stood in need of God’s mercy or the Church’s sacraments had been satisfied Father Enrique arranged a great festival lasting over several days to re-dedicate the church, the town, and the people to their patron, St John the Baptist.

The bishop had thought Father Enrique a man of brains and in the matter of the festival he showed the bishop to be once more correct in his judgment. From an affluent background himself, he moved easily among money and position and knew how the minds of the wealthy worked, so most of his great festival he paid for himself. In doing this he won the unreserved affection of the poor but, more importantly, he also won the respect of the few wealthy families of the town who, on hearing of the planned festival, had fully expected him to come to them to finance it.

The festival, though magnificent by the standards of San Juan, was in reality a modest affair and dented Father Enrique’s purse hardly at all. But it served its main purpose: it put the mass of the people solidly behind him and made him someone of consequence in the life of the town. It also put the wealthy families off their guard so that when, about three months after the festival, he made the rounds of the fine houses informing them that he intended to establish an orphanage for homeless and abandoned children they found themselves in a difficult position. That something needed to be done about the town’s young vagabonds, of whom more than a few survived by prostitution or petty crime, no one could deny. But an orphanage? That meant a building, furniture, staff, and provisions, all of which would run into serious money, money they were unwilling to see go to a cause which furthered their own interests, so far as they could see, not at all. But their time for reflection was short-lived. Father Enrique made a public announcement from his pulpit at all Sunday Masses that he was opening a subscription to create a building fund. The centavos of the poor he knew he could rely on and God would bless and reward them. His silence on whether he could place such reliance on the pesos of the wealthy spoke volumes and placed the foremost men of the town in an impossible position.

As Father Enrique had suspected, it was not a real contest.

It would be heartening to say that the wealthy families gave because they were persuaded of the worthiness of the cause, but that would be an overstatement. There were few positions of real importance and status in San Juan and those that existed were hotly disputed by, and duly distributed among, these families. If one family was generous and another refused, it would be like handing the office of mayor, chief of police, senior magistrate, or whatever was currently on offer to the one who had best supported Father Enrique’s orphanage.

Privately, in their exclusive club, the men bemoaned this business of an upstart, young priest, arriving from nowhere and at once deciding to set the town on its ear. Why couldn’t he keep to his own affairs, Church affairs? In their homes, however, the men had to listen to their wives and daughters. Father Enrique’s orphanage fund gave the female element of society an unparalleled opportunity for social good works. They could organise fund-raising events: balls, galas. Society in San Juan was, regrettably, rather dull and repetitive and these sudden new horizons had fired up the ladies of the town to an almost white heat of enthusiasm. The men, hardheaded men of business and commerce, might regret their ladies’ petty enthusiasms, but they had the sense not to oppose them. So it was that to a man they all gave and gave generously and after what was, for San Juan, an almost miraculously short time a new orphanage capable of accommodating fifty children from birth to thirteen arose. The bishop himself came from Manila, opened and blessed the building, and stayed the night in Father Enrique’s house where he gave, in the grounds, a small, select party for the major benefactors of the venture. This visitation and party alone, everyone agreed, was almost worth all the money raised and spent. Within a year the new orphanage safely housed twenty children under the care of three nuns brought in from a convent in Pasig where Father Enrique had so successfully served his parochial apprenticeship.

To the ordinary people of San Juan Father Enrique wore no halo that anyone could see, but that didn’t mean to say they didn’t regard him as a living saint and, as a result, his influence and importance grew to equal and outshine even the most wealthy. He was no longer merely a man to be reckoned with, he was now the man to be reckoned with, and in his regular reports to the Bishop in Manila he humbly but very clearly made sure that the situation in San Juan was thoroughly explained and understood.

Everyone might have been forgiven for thinking that, having done so much in so short a time, Father Enrique would at least pause before embarking on some new great project. But they were wrong, because Father Enrique was a man in a hurry. He had an appointment with the bishop which he intended to keep as soon as was humanly possible.