New Calungsod parish to rise in Talamban

Another church in honor of Visayan martyr Pedro Calungsod will eventually be established in Cebu.

Fr. Daniel Daculan, parochial vicar of San Isidro Labrador Parish in Talamban, Cebu City, said the plan was set in motion after getting the approval of Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma.

For a start, a mission station is being built and is 95 percent finished in the mountain village of Pulangbato in Talamban, he said.

“There is an intention to have a new parish. We want to dedicate it to Pedro Calungsod in honor of the new saint,” Daculan said in a press conference at the Archbishop’s Residence yesterday.

This will serve as the sister parish of the San Isidro Labrador Church under Msgr. Carlito Pono and cover three mountain villages of Pulangbato, Pit-os and Binaliw.

“The mother parish of Talamban will guide the new parish,” Daculan said.

In order to be a parish, a religious establishment should have at least one hectare of land for a church and another hecatre for a Catholic cemetery.

He said a parish should also have rectory and a social hall, among others.

He said the creation of the mission station is a product of the Basic Ecclesial Program of the Church.

A Calungsod parish already exists in barangay Cantabaco, Toledo City.

It was established in 2006 with a hilltop church built the other year.

The church is considered the first parish in Cebu province to bear the name of the soon-to-be-declared saint.

Calungsod was beatified on March 5, 2000.

Two years later, the Archdiocesan Shrine of Blessed Pedro Calungsod was inaugurated in the Archbishop’s Residence Compound along D. Jakosalem Street.

Daily Masses are held in the shrine, which holds, among other sacred items, a chest of sand from the beach in Tumhon, Guam where Calungsod was killed in 1672, and relics of two saints, including Jesuit missionary Fr. Diego Luis de San Vitores.

The shrine was built from donations of benefactors and excess funds raised for preparations for the 2000 beatification.