GIFT TO SPAIN: Pampanga Archbishop Florentino Lavarias installs a wood relic to close the bust of the Santa Maria del Sagrario image, which was made by Filipino sculptor Willy Layug. The image will be given to a parish in Spain as a gift of faith in gratitude for Spain’s bringing Christianity to the Philippines almost 500 years ago. (Photo by TONETTE OREJAS / Inquirer Northern Luzon)
GUAGUA, Pampanga, Philippines — The Archdiocese of San Fernando has sent a religious image to a parish in Spain in gratitude for bringing Christianity to the Philippines almost 500 years ago.
During Saturday’s rite at St. James the Apostle Parish in Betis here, Archbishop Florentino Lavarias and Archbishop Emeritus Paciano Aniceto put a woodblock to close the bust of the Santa Maria del Sagrario image.
The wood was part of a relic made to touch the original Santo Niño de Cebu image, said to have been a gift of Portuguese circumnavigator Ferdinand Magellan to Rajah Kulambo after the native chieftain’s baptism into Catholicism following the first Mass in the country in 1521.
Enshrinement in Malaga
The new image will be enshrined on March 26 at Nuestro Padre Jesús de la Verdad parish church in Málaga, Spain, in time for Holy Week, said Willy Layug, who sculpted and donated it.
In a message read during the occasion, Jose Manuel Leiva Perez, president of Grupo de Fieles de Nuestro Padre Jesus de la Verdad, said “she is anxiously awaited to be welcomed.”
Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, a native of Betis, helped Layug request Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma to provide the relic.
Layug said Grupo de Fieles de Nuestro Padre Jesus de la Verdad and its designer, Alvaro Fernandez, commissioned him in November last year to make the bust.
Layug, a papal awardee, decided to donate the image as a “token of appreciation for the heritage.”
Perez and Fernandez documented the production of the bust for the Nuestro Padre Jesús de la Verdad parishioners.
For the 500th year of the Christianization of the Philippines next year, the Betis parish commissioned a bamboo organ, the second so far in the country.
The government has declared Betis Church a national cultural treasure, likening it to Sistine Chapel at the Vatican because the Gospels are taught in visual catechism on its walls, ceilings and doors.