Beautiful Suluan sunset. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
GUIUAN, Eastern Samar—As Christendom celebrates Easter, worshippers are coming in droves to a popular church here, grateful for having survived the worst storm in their lives.
Observing a significant number of survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) coming to visit St. Anthony of Padua Church at Sulangan village (population: 3,500) is Fr. Joberto Picardal, the parish priest, who has ordered additional Masses and other rites to accommodate the sudden spike in churchgoers.
“A lot of Yolanda survivors have been coming to our church lately. This is something new to us,” Picardal, 65, said.
“They come to thank the Lord for their new gift of life, and those who lost loved ones come here to pray for their dead,” said Picardal, who hails from Oras town.
Worship and pilgrimage
Located 39 kilometers south of this town, the church is a popular place of worship and pilgrimage in Leyte and Samar provinces because of its image of St. Anthony of Padua, the saint from the 12th century who is associated with the recovery of lost things and reprieve from lost causes. Devotees believe the image is miraculous.
The church, with a Baroque façade popularized by its Franciscan mission heritage, was reconstructed in 1957 and was repaired in 2007 under Fr. Jose Lugay.
In this church, the entrance to which is just a few steps from the sea, the desperate and hopeless find solace and refuge, and the healed raise hosannas to high heavens.
“I almost died from dengue. But I also survived Yolanda so I came back here to sing my praises to the Lord,” said 22-year-old nurse Elizabeth Ann Palacio of Palo town, Leyte.
The rich come in their flashy cars, the poor arrive in crowded jeepneys and crammed tricycles. But they are one in professing their faith and in asking for divine intervention for their earthly needs like healing for various ailments, success in board exams, job promotion, even a wife or a girlfriend, or a baby.
Given a child
Such was the case for Marilou Manglinong, a firefighter from Tacloban City, who drove 200 km in her Mitsubishi Montero to hear Mass here. She said she became a devotee after St. Anthony granted her wish to have a child.
“I thought I was barren. But I made a vow to come here regularly if I am blessed with a child,” said Manglinong, 36, whose seafarer husband Dennis, 38, is currently based in Argentina.
After years of trying, the couple finally had a baby on April 8, 2006, after regularly visiting the church in Sulangan village, Manglinong named her son Joman Anthony after St. Anthony of Padua.
On Nov. 8, 2013, as Yolanda ravaged Tacloban, Manglinong and her 7-year-old son, whom she calls “my gift from St. Anthony,” found refuge in the office of the Tacloban City Bureau of Fire Protection on the top of Kanhuraw Hill.
“I credit my new life and that of my boy to St. Anthony,” Manglinong said. She is expecting her husband to come home for a visit next month.
Residents of Sulangan who are mostly fishermen also believe St. Anthony saved them from Yolanda’s wrath as the monster storm made its first of five landfalls here.
Most of the residents claim they saw two huge waves smashing into each other, leaving the newly renovated church undamaged.
The village suffered only one casualty, Jose Custodio, who was hit by a flying sheet of metal roofing that almost cut him in half. The rest of Guiuan recorded 100 dead.
One of the more visible visitors in the village is Guiuan Mayor Christopher Sheen Gonzales who drops by often to pray in the church. The 33-year-old Gonzales is credited by international observers for saving lives by ordering forced evacuations days before Yolanda struck. But he is quick to say that his timely decision came from God.
“I did not save Guiuan. It was the unseen hand of the Lord that saved us,” Gonzales said.