If the stones could speak

If the stones could speak, then work would be easier. That is insofar as piecing together all the debris that has fallen on the grounds of the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño. These past two weeks, a team from Escuela Taller in Intramuros and archaeologists from Manila have begun quietly sorting and making sense of the coral rubble that was once part of the third body or story of the basilica belfry.

They were joined yesterday by my students in Cebu who are trained in archaeology, including two museum curators, Audrey Dawn Tomada of the Halad Musem and Maria Cecilia Cabañes of Museo Sugbo. Cabañes has to learn what to do with these stones especially since some of the perimeter coral stone wall of the Museo Sugbo is in danger of collapse. Among the graduate students in archaeology on site is a former chair of the fine arts department at USC, Brenda Seno, whose expertise in illustration will come in handy.

Why archaeologists, one might ask. The answer is simple: because archaeologists are used to the tedious (and oftentimes boring) work of measuring, weighing, cataloguing and profiling shells, bones, pottery and ceramic sherds, broken fragments that are each numbered and recorded.

Although the stones at the basilica are not buried, they may as well have been and it would not matter to us archaeologists. The job, however is, in a sense, less tasking because my students do not have to dig the rubble up from, say, one meter beneath the surface. And the volunteer archaeologists from Manila led by Dr. Grace Barretto-Tesoro of the University of the Philippines Archaeological Studies Program have already done the task of separating rubble from dressed stones.

If only the stones at the basilica could speak, then we would no longer be there to do scientific measurements, illustrations and photography. These stones would simply tell the architects and engineers where they were before the earthquake shook last October 15.

Alas, these stones are but silent witnesses to the disaster and they have no one to speak for them but these young men and women whose job is to try to understand these thousands of pieces and prepare them for their eventual return up on the belfry.

The task is, I believe, a noble one but also as daunting as the restoration of the belfry that will come later once this documentation work is done. The earthquake could not have struck at a more important time than this. In 2015, this church dedicated to the Sto. Niño de Cebu will mark its 50th year as a Basilica Minore, a declaration made by Pope Paul VI in 1965 on the 400th anniversary of the beginning of Christianization in the Philippines.

In 1565, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, the Spanish conquistador, docked in Cebu and a day later a sailor of his, Juan Camus, found the tiny image of the Sto. Niño right at the very spot where the church now stands. The image had been kept in a pine box and tied with other boxes, a memento that marked its travails, from being brought to the island by Ferdinand Magellan in the ill-fated 1521 expedition, to being given away upon the request of the wife of Rajah Humabon days after her christening as Juana.

The year 2015 will be the 450th anniversary of that event. And a year later, the 51st International Eucharistic Congress (IEC) will be held in Cebu in late January, with Pope Francis expected to drop by at this most holy of places for Cebuano Catholics.

The pressure is strongest therefore for the Augustinian priests administering the basilica to find a way to stabilize the church and its belfry even as time moves ever faster.

One can only imagine how the Sinulog festivities and rites at the basilica would fare in January next year even as the belfry will most probably still stand unrestored, waiting for these stones to finally find their place. That is, with the help of those volunteers now painstakingly documenting each and every piece so that none will go to waste.

One day these stones will once again proudly look down on the faithful as they flock once more to the beloved abode of their faith.