Big trouble in little Pardo

I could have titled this piece “Caught between a rock and a hard place” but that is too wordy. Nevertheless, this succinctly captures the difficulties of Msgr. Carlito Pono and Fr. Brian Brigoli in the face of the strange architectural concoction of the once-grand El Pardo Church. Running the archdiocesan heritage commission in Cebu puts both these clergymen at the forefront of talking with their fellow priests about preservation, apparently to no avail in some quarters. El Pardo Church is one more reason to suspect that there is a disconnect between theory and practice.

Fr. Brian Birgoli was sent by Ricardo Cardinal Vidal to the University of Sto. Tomas for his master’s degree in heritage conservation studies. He had to delay his ordination  to earn this important degree, which he did in just two years of studies. After ordination in 2008, he went to work for the Cebu Archdiocesan Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church.  You should hear him laugh out his frustrations at what has happened to El Pardo and the little triumphs he made amid some failures.

He was able to stop the plan to put an arched portal of some kind some six meters from the façade of this venerable Spanish colonial church. But he was not too late to stop the laughable emplacement of false classical columns with Corinthian capitals that now line the huge coral stone and lime mortar posts inside the church. At least, he says, he was able to counsel the architect and engineer there to cover up the lavish ill-advised decorative grooving on the columns. But the faux marble painting still has not been stripped off.  Why these columns were added to already existing meter-thick posts dating to the 1870s remains a mystery. I was there when the commission members visited this church early this year to see what the plans were. And no one ever said that they were going to embellish this Filipino Baroque structure with Greek classical elements.

Perhaps it is time to remind the priests and parishioners of El Pardo that this is the same church that was the scene of triumphant frenzy of the Cebuano Katipuneros some hours after the Tres de Abril uprising of 1898, the same church where American soldiers rested on their triumphant push towards Cebu City to rid it of the Japanese Occupation in 1945. It was designed by Don Domingo de Escondrillas in 1864, the same military architect-engineer who designed many bridges and structures in Cebu, including the Carcel de Cebu, now Museo Sugbo, as well as convent of Malabuyoc and the magnificent church of Loon, Bohol. Copies of his plans and designs for El Pardo, whose façade is said to mimic an architectural feature of the Palacio El Pardo in Spain, are still obtainable at the National Archives in Manila as well as at the Cebuano Studies Center of the University of San Carlos.

One of the culprits behind this ill-advised embellishment of the church and its convent along Classical lines was the parish fiesta last week—everyone apparently wanted a newer church (or maybe one that looked weird?). I thought this plan ended when Fr. Brian advised the architect there to strip off the cement if this would not harm the coral stone blocks hidden underneath. Somebody had this bright idea of removing the cement only to cover it up again with another kind of cement with a decorative flair, as if some tragic play was to be reenacted inside.

The result is tragic to say the least.

While the European Union is funding the restoration of churches to their original elements, here we are also rushing  to add new, disconnected elements to the very few historic colonial churches in our midst. I hope this is not a kind of welcome gift to Archbishop Jose Palma on his first six months as archbishop of Cebu. I was there when the commission had met with the good archbishop for the first time and this issue of El Pardo was discussed. And I understand that Gov. Gwendolyn F. Garcia, incensed by the alteration of the 1920s chapel of Sangat, San Fernando, wrote a letter of concern to the archbishop lately to find out what is going on and how Capitol can help end the rash of renovations.

The other day, during our informal meeting with the equally exasperated Loy Alix (imagine her raising her hands to heaven in frustration) to plan the 5th anniversary of the Cebu Cathedral Museum, Fr. Brian admitted some lapses of the commission, especially in the communication process. He will recommend to the commission members the creation of a document almost akin to the accreditation forms for universities, where plans are written down on one column by the parish priest and his architect while the commission comments and recommendations on an adjacent column. This way, no one will wash his hands whenever renovations are carried out and the result becomes a tragedy.

It is time to end all these incongruities and put them on record. Let El Pardo be the last of these tragedies, please!