Holy Crusade

“AQUI en la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad.”
For the sake of those indios pobresitos ignorantes en la lengua de Madre España, we ilustrados y insulares take that to mean “in Pampanga, there is much piety but little charity.”
Fifty years ago, Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero, the first to occupy the bishopric of San Fernando, uttered those words, noting “the stark class differences between the rich and the poor, the strife between the landlords and the tenants, and a deteriorating socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism.”
These were manifest situations of the imperative of revolution in his See. And a revolution did indeed obtain then in Pampanga, with the Huks already “at the very gates of Manila.”
Marked as apostates pursuing the establishment of a “godless” society, the Huks naturally had to be stopped, and their ideology uprooted to “save the country and Mother Church.” A strategic policy of the Cold War placed the Church at the bulwark of the war against communism.
Thus, Bishop Guerrero organized the Cruzada – the Crusade for Penance and Charity – in 1952 . In revolutionary praxis, the Cruzada served the ends of a counter-revolution. Unrepentant communists would readily see it as the affirmation of the Marxist dictum: “Religion is the opium of the people.”
Images of the Virgen de los Remedios and Santo Cristo del Perdon were taken all around the Pampanga parishes were they stayed for days, the faithful seeking their intercession and intervention through non-stop prayers and nightly processions.
A hymn to the virgin was composed with peace as recurrent refrain: “…ica’ng minye tula ampon capayapan / quing indu ning balen quequeng lalawigan / uling calimbun mu caring sablang dalan / ding barrio at puruc caring cabalenan / agad menatili ing catahimican…” (…you gave us joy and peace / to the mother of our province / when taken in procession / in all the barrios in the towns / peace descended upon them…) Forgive the poor translation.
The charity end of the crusade – Lamac – was institutionalized – all the barrio folk, even the poorest of them, shared some goods that would accompany the images to their next destination and given to the neediest there.
The Cruzada in effect became an equalizing and unifying factor among the faithful, regardless of their socio-economic situation. And relative peace did come to the province. For a time.
The breadth and depth of the devotion to the Virgen de los Remedios of the Capampangan moved Pope Pius XII to approve her canonical coronation as the patroness of Pampanga on September 8, 1956.
Fifty years hence, “the stark class differences between the rich and the poor, the strife between the landlords and the tenants, and a deteriorating socio-political-economic situation bordering on socialism” still obtain in Pampanga and in the rest of the Philippines. So has the Cruzada of peace through charity and prayers failed?
Pray not, else the crusade of an all-out war waged by another Pampanga lady shall find more cause in collateral blood. And while at it, may the Pampanga clergy have the discernment not to ask her to do the crowning of the virgin on September 8, as they did with the Cabetican icon. Her government’s crusade of death blasphemes all that the Virgen de los Remedios represents.
Ours is the Indu ning Capaldanan (Mother of Remedies) that is the Tula ding Capampangan (Joy of the Capampangan). Never the indu ning camatayan (mother of death) that is paldas ding Capampangan (grief of the Capampangan).
Pray.
(Published in Pampanga News, July 6-12, 2006)