Conversion and beatification

The missionaries’ contributions to social order in the Philippines are not far and between. In fact, the early Spanish padres who braved the wilderness of Davao Region, young as they were, were trendsetters, explorers, and intrepid adventurers. Against the odds and with a very limited knowledge of the places they explored, their skills in human relations defined their mission and they made an indelible difference in the way the indigenous tribes and the Moros looked at them.

While their missions were made less perilous by the presence of law enforcers accompanying them in their travels, the unusual courage they showed in the face of adversity surprised the non-Christian chieftains. There were those who stood out as models, but the most iconic among the Jesuits were Fathers Mateo Gisbert and Saturnino Urios.

Fondly called as the ‘apostle of the Bagobos,’ Fr. Gisbert, born on July 6, 1847, in Cherta, Tarragona, Spain, joined the Jesuit order on March 14, 1876 but arrived in eastern Mindanao three years later at age 32. His first assignment was in Caraga where he stayed for half a year. He was later reassigned to the Davao mission where he was a roving missionary) for 14 years, three as local superior. He died on November 30, 1906, a few months shy of his sixtieth birthday.

Fr. Urios, born on November 12, 1843 in Jativa, Valencia Province, entered seminary at the advice of the parish priest and with the support of his barber-father, who allowed him to pursue studies, first at Játiva, and later at the Seminario Conciliar in Valencia. He was ordained diocesan priest on June 6, 1868, but in January 1870 left for France where the Jesuits, exiled from Spain by the September Revolution, had established their novitiate. On July 30, 1874, he found himself boarding from Marseilles for Manila and Mindanao, where he worked as a Jesuit missionary for 40 years. He evangelized the natives and founded towns along the Agusan River and its tributaries. He was better known as the ‘apostle of the Upper Agusan Valley.’

The duo’s contributions, however, did not escape the scrutiny of a Davao historian who worked on their beatification twenty years ago.

The initial effort to beatify them was launched on November 7, 2005 when Oliverio Suazo Divino, a Dabawenyo residing in Gaithersburg, Maryland, furnished the Vatican with voluminous documents, photos, and maps collected from Centro Borja, San Cugat del Valles, in Barcelona, Spain, which were related to the life and works of the missionaries. He also submitted scholarly articles written by eminent Jesuit historians Miguel A. Bernad and Jose S. Arcilla.

Days later, the Postulazione Generale della Compagnia di Gesu, the Jesuit office in Rome, responded. Fr. Paul Molinari, S.J., the signatory, acknowledged that the documents were ‘very interesting… and [the] pages are certainly throwing some light on the activity accomplished by [the missionaries] and the situation of that part of the Philippines where they spent themselves to spread the Good News and evangelize the members of the [B]agobo and others.’

Following the norms in the Causes of Beatification and Canonization, Fr. Molinari cited two key points: The bishops sought to support the canonization have ‘to ascertain that there exists among the people of God a widely spread reputation for holiness’ of the person processed for ecclesiastical inquiry, and there has to be ‘profound methodological difference’ with regard to ‘recent’ causes (testimonies of people who know the life, activity and virtues of the priests) and ‘ancient’ or ‘historical’ causes (documentary evidences as bases in rebuilding the biographies).

As an essential preliminary condition for the cause of beatification, Fr. Molinari said the status of piety attributed to the two clerics should be extensive and well known to the large segment of the Christian community where they evangelized, the absence of which ‘would mean to work in vain’ for the recognition of Urios and Gisbert as future saints. Even in the development of an accurate biography, the Jesuit professor called such enterprise as ‘very demanding.’ (23)