Town nearly wiped out by lahar could lose 440-yr-old church

18TH CENTURY San Guillermo Church PHOTO FROM CENTER FOR KAPAMPANGAN STUDIES

BACOLOR, PAMPANGA—As though almost being erased from the map was not enough, this town risks losing a Catholic church that serves as Pampanga’s most visible and cruel reminder of Mt. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruptions and deadly lahar flows.

Twenty-five years after the disaster buried half of the 440-year-old San Guillermo (St. William the Hermit) Church, its adjacent bell tower has been tilting to a still unmeasured degree at an alarming rate, according to Fr. Manuel Sta. Maria, the parish priest.

“We have [the equivalent of the] Leaning Tower of Pisa here,” he said, referring to the famous landmark in Italy. Viewed from the main gate, the bell tower is seen leaning to the left, in the direction of the rectory.

“It has slanted somehow,” said Carmelita Cabildo, 76, who sells delicacies at a makeshift stall beside the church’s front gate.

What is left of the tower is about half of its original height.

A typhoon on Oct. 1, 1995 unleashed rains that washed down volcanic material, sending 20 meter-high lahar toward Cabalantian and nearby villages in the early hours of the morning.

Chipped by old age, these two bells had been taken down to reduce the weight bearing on the leaning bell tower of San Guillermo Church in Bacolor. —TONETTE T. OREJAS

Cabalantian tragedy

Folk call this event the “Cabalantian Tragedy,” which may have killed up to 1,000 people because there has been no final accounting of the dead.

The church was entombed, the three windows of the choir loft on the second floor serving as doors.

Sta. Maria said he observed the tilting two years ago and consulted with a structural engineer. No formal assessment of the tower has been conducted.

He has appealed to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and experts in the private sector, including heritage advocates, to determine the cause of the tilting, the hazards this may pose, the impact on the rest of the church, and the ways to stabilize it.

“The Catholic faithful of San Guillermo will be forever thankful if the DPWH and private structural engineers can extend their precious assistance to us,” Sta. Maria said on Tuesday.

The San Guillermo Church has not yet been declared a national cultural treasure. It is not qualified to get financial assistance from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

But NCCA may consider Bacolor’s stature as the capital of the Philippines during the British invasion in 1762-1764, for its men and women fighting in the 1896 Philippine Revolution against Spain, its being Pampanga’s capital until 1904 and the brunt it bore from Mt. Pinatubo, local heritage advocates said.

Residents consider the San Guillermo Church as their source of hope amid the disaster. The bell tower also serves as a point of reference for land surveys.

Two of its old bells, now partly chipped off, have been taken down, although the two bigger bells are still hanging. Hundreds of bats and birds take refuge in its caverns but it is not known if the bats combined with the bells have become structural burdens to the tower.

The tilting of the tower came as the San Guillermo Church turns 440 years old next month. It is the fifth oldest church in Pampanga after those in Lubao and Betis (1572), and Macabebe and Candaba (1575)./rga