The Workers’ Church

If you pass by Talisay City nowadays, be warned of heavier than usual traffic near the flyover especially today, the eve of the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, patron saint of the Tabunok parish and workers around the world.

The Tabunok parish church is unique in many ways. It is in the middle of the busiest section of the city, where vendors, traders and people from all over meet on a daily basis to engage in commerce. I always pass by this area and not a day passes that the stretch from Rabaya street near the flyover to Lagtang is not packed with people buying and selling.

Everything is availabble from vegetables, fruits, cooked food, laid out in the street close to business establishments like pharmacies, bakeries, grocery stores, agriculture suppliers including videoke spots to stalls selling roasted pig and chicken, cooked food, garden plants and building supplies.

If this isn’t crammed enough, habal-habals also park here, including jeepneys plying the Tabunok-Jaclupan route. Some evenings, vendors selling ukay-ukay descend on the place.

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The church of St. Joseph in Tabunok was established in Aug. 19, 1962 after it was carved out of the main parish of Sta. Teresa de Avila. One of its first programs was the organization of Kapunongan ni San Jose for the purpose of attending to sick members and families who lost their loved ones. Lay workers descended from the Cabusas, Ruiz, Rabaya and Bacus families led the project.

Today the Kapunongan remains active although Tabunok’s terrain has changed enormously. What used to be a quiet neighborhood from the 1920s up to the 1960s is now Talisay City’s center of trade and commerce. Residents would have never imagined that the neighborhood would be thriving in present day proportions, or that the church would be watching over a sea of workers.

The St. Joseph the Worker parish led by Msgr. Ruben Labajo is marking the church’s 50th anniversary in Aug. 19, 2012 and indeed, there are plenty of things to celebrate.

The church has undergone major renovations, beginning with the altar and the sacristy including the priests’ lounge. Church goers nod in appreciation over the work of engineer Ariel Araw-Araw, who also refurbished the façade and rendered additional works on the side of the main entrance. The projects are extraordinary with respect to the speed with which it was organized, launched and completed.

Monsignor Labajo told this corner that when they announced in November 2010 that the church needed financial support for the construction of the main altar, contributions poured in. The church actually had no altar to speak of. There was only a table placed between two columns. It didn’t take long to raise the needed outlay of P2.2 million prompting the delivery of the project in February 2011.

A year later, Monsignor Labajo initiated the renovation of the façade which required another hefty budget. Again, the project struck an emotional chord with parishioners because the church looked like a commercial establishment from outside. Engineer Araw-Araw’s concept raised the façade with the saint’s 5-meter statue with backdrop hovering from above. Once again, parishioners including those from mountain barangays gave generously and the project was finished early this year.

Ongoing projects include beautification of the ramp and candle area by the right side of the main entrance. The church will soon be gated with a 1.5-meter fence to prevent vagrants from sleeping inside the church property.

Parishioners give freely but credit also goes to Monsignor Labajo for coming up with interesting campaigns, like “Edad Ko, Halad Ko,” wherein people, both young and old, contributed funds based on their age.

The feast of St. Joseph the Worker honors the dignity of workers and I guess nowhere is this more relevant than in the mission of the church in Tabunok, Talisay. It radiates the Gospel from a busy and chaotic environment that sometimes I wonder if the local government or the people are aware that a church is just nearby.

The place teems with garbage. Traffic is impossible because the area has become a terminal of sorts for habal-habal, tricycles and motorcycles especially if no traffic enforcers are around.

One thing that Talisay City Mayor Socrates Fernandez can achieve in the short term is the strict implementation of zonal regulations in Tabunok. Church officials are worried that sellers of bamboo poles have practically made the church walls part of their storage area. This section near the highway caught fire last year and the parish team ministry is worried over business leaning on church property. Mayor Soc should also take concrete action on videoke joints operating near the church.

Msgr. Labajo is likewise calling on the Visayan Electric Company to do something about the wires hanging like “pancit” in front of the church. The electric connections cover the statue of St. Joseph and because huge sums had been spent to beautify the church, I agree the hitches don’t make sense. I hope Ethel Natera will dispatch Veco’s quick response team to that area to do its share in sprucing up the workers’ church.