Not just a building, but a ‘living Church’

The Holy Rosary Parish church in Angeles City, Pampanga. E.I. REYMOND OREJAS

ANGELES CITY—Catholics in Angeles City in Pampanga province on Saturday launched a coffee table book celebrating their church as an edifice and community.

The book, “Pisamban Maragul: The Living Church of Angeles City,” is dedicated to Pope Francis, who is visiting the Philippines on Jan. 15.

It will be one of the gifts to the Pope so it will be kept in the library of the Vatican, the seat of the Catholic faith, said Pampanga Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David.

The Kapampangan phrase “pisamban maragul” means huge church. From a capellan (chapel) made of bamboo, wood and nipa roof that founders Don Angel Pantaleon de Miranda and Doña Rosalia de Jesus built in what was then Barrio Culiat of San Fernando town, the Holy Rosary Parish (HRP) evolved in the last 185 years as a strong, crucifix-shaped Byzantine structure with two bell towers.

“The Pope knows well that many old heritage churches in Europe have practically become dead churches or sheer museums. The book is not just about an old building; it is about a living Church,” said David, who heads the parish since 2008.

David is one of the authors of the book that reviewers found to be rich with archival documents, anecdotal information by parishioners and rare photographs laid out in 350 pages bound in hard cover.

This is the third book that he cowrote with Nina L.B. Tomen, after books on the devotion to Apu Mamacalulu (Dead Christ) in Angeles City and religiosity of Catholics in the former Betis town, which has not been erased or lost although it was annexed to Guagua town in 1904.

“Why shouldn’t we dedicate it to the man who is giving so much new life and hope to the Church today?” David said of Pope Francis, an Argentinian.

The book is a “product of magic of [people] working together,” said Hilana Timbol-Roman, president of the publisher, Curia Sancti Rosarii Inc., a nongovernment group affiliated with HRP.

Piety and charity

She said accounts of old-timers were included in the book, confirming what David called the piety and charity of residents.

Around here, priests take turns officiating six Masses on Saturdays and 11 Masses on Sundays. The Blessed Sacrament chapel, which was rebuilt behind the sacristy, is filled with young people from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Of the seven wooden boxes—for the seven acts of mercy in the gospel of Matthew—at the Apu Mamacalulu Shrine, the top three boxes filled with donations are those intended for feeding the hungry, burying the dead and sheltering the homeless.

Tomen said the book took a year and three months to finish, the rush provided by the destruction left by a strong earthquake on heritage churches in the Visayas.

“This is not only about parish history; it is also a documentation of the heritage of the HRP community. It looks at both Pisamban Maragul as edifice, the House of God (Casa de Dios), and Pisamban Maragul, the living church. There, it goes beyond the myopic view that church heritage is solely about the preservation of material goods (the church structure, the convent, church ornaments, church documents etc.),” Tomen said in the book’s preface.

“It asserts the point that even popular devotions, religious rites, rituals, traditions, sacred music and other nonmaterial forms of faith expression are part of church heritage,” she said.

Written accounts of the founders’ descendants—Mariano Vicente Henson de Miranda, Daniel Dizon and Dr. Mariano Henson—helped put together the beginnings of the HRP.

The HRP is one of the few churches in the country not created by missionaries. The Miranda couple, natives of San Fernando, cleared the village of Culiat in 1796, bringing the image of the Nuestra Señora del Santisimmo Rosario (Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary) as protection against the Aeta.

The first chapel was inaugurated in 1812, dedicated to the same patron. It was on Dec. 8, 1829, after several bids by the founders, that Culiat’s independence from San Fernando was granted and renamed in honor of the Holy Guardian Angels.