Pedro’s Visayas hometown remains a mystery

THERE is no proof of Pedro Calungsod’s exact place of origin in the Visayas, like a baptismal record.

His exact provenance remains a puzzle, according to Fr. Ildebrando Leyson, whose extensive research for the Archdiocese of Cebu provided the basis for Vatican approval of the cause of his beatification and later canonization.

Old documents written by Calungsod’s companion Jesuit missionaries in the 1600s describe Calungsod as an “indio bisaya” or a Visayan native.

The surname Calungsod is quite common.

“Today they can be found in different parts of the Visayas, in Mindanao, in Luzon and even abroad — just as Pedro Calungsod himself was already in Guam as early as the 17th century,” said Fr. Leyson in his book “Pedro Calungsor Bisaya: Prospects of a Teenage Filipino”.

“However the ‘Calungsod’ families are densely found in the Visayas towns of Ginatilan in Cebu, Hinundayan and Hinunangan in southern Leyte, and in Molo district of Iloilo City in Panay.”

But how did Jesuit missionairies recruit the boy when there was none in south Cebu at the time? The nearest Jesuit mission station was in Tanay in eastern Negros, though just across the channel from Ginatilan.

The boy’s surname is spelled in various manuscripts of his Spanish companions as “Calonsor, Calongsor, Calansor, and Calangsor.”

“His real family name must have been Calungsod, which unfortuantely does not appear in any of the documents. It comes from the Visayan word lungsod which means “town” or “citizenry”…. The variations of the spelling of Pedro’s family name in the documents may have been due to the Spanish authors’ certain difficulty with the Visayan phonetics like the nasal “ng” and the hard terminal “d.”” wrote the priest.

The first written account of Pedro Calungsod was written 24 days after he was killed by natives in Guam. The account was made by his companion missionary in Guam, Fr. Francisco Solano, who had worked in Negros since 1665 when Pedro would have been about 10 years old.

Other Calungsods in Ginatilan town have migrated to other places like Midsayap in Cotabato, Leyte, Bohol, and Iloilo.

Research by Fr. Leyson showed other Visayans named Pedro Calungsod. There was a Pedro Calungsod who was baptized in the town of Ginatilan in Cebu on May 23 May 1909. Much earlier, there was a Pedro Calungsod who was baptized in the town of Hinunangan in Leyte in 1854.

Pedro, a teenage catechist was among the first to serve on a mission organized by Fr. Diego de San Vitores to the Ladrones Islands in the Western Pacific, Marianas, on June 16, 1668.

Trained by the Jesuits, he learned how to read, write and deliver discourses in Visayan, Spanish and Chamorro, the native language.

He was killed along with Fr. Diego on April 2, 1672. They were speared with a cutlass by two villagers in Tumhon, Guam, for catechizing and baptizing the natives. /ADOR VINCENT S. MAYOL