‘Yolanda’ aid drive turns to ‘Pedrito’
BOY ON A MISSION One of the Pedrito doll’s chief endorsers, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
“Pedrito” is the cute face of a Manila-based organization’s efforts to help victims of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”
The young ministers, missionaries and coordinators of the Catholic group YouthPinoy are again counting on the miniature, toy-like depiction of Filipino saint Pedro Calungsod to raise funds for relief missions in the storm-battered provinces in the Visayas.
Selling the 15-inch doll—which portrays the teenage saint as a lad in camisa de chino and dark trousers and carrying a sling bag—earlier raised about P50,000 for the group in its fund-raiser for the restoration of old churches destroyed by the Oct. 15 earthquake in Bohol and Cebu provinces.
“With the recent events in the Visayas, our task has become bigger,” said YouthGroup officer April Frances Ortigas. “The call to help our brothers and sisters in need has become more urgent, not only in Bohol and Cebu but in other parts of the Visayas.”
Starting Sunday, the group based at the Intramuros office of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) will tap select parishes in Metro Manila to sell Pedrito dolls to parishioners, this time for the benefit of “Yolanda” victims.
YouthPinoy is selling the dolls at P650 each. For every doll sold, P100 will go to the relief fund. Orders can be placed online at www.youthpinoy.com.
Native son to the rescue
Ortigas said it was only fitting for Calungsod, the second Filipino to be canonized after Lorenzo Ruiz, to be the image of succor for the devastated Visayan towns and cities since he was a native of that region.
Msgr. Pedro Quitorio, YouthPinoy adviser, said proceeds from the new Pedrito doll sale would be channeled through the diocese of Borongan, Eastern Samar, and the archdiocese of Palo, Leyte.
Launched in time with Calungsod’s elevation to sainthood in October last year, the Pedrito doll was the brainchild of the New Media Committee of the National Commission for Calungsod’s Canonization. The doll then went on a “tour” of Rome.
The committee described the Pedrito figure as “the personification of a missionary youth or a ‘lakwatserong misyonero’ with an on-the-go attitude to talk to people about their lives and stories.”
Historical records show that Calungsod was born in Cebu in 1655.
He became a missionary at the age of 14 and traveled to Spain with a group of Jesuit catechists.
He met a violent death on April 2, 1672, in the village of Tumon, Guam, where he was hit with a spear in the chest and struck with a machete in the head while protecting his companion priest from nonbelievers.
