Christianity has been in Luzon and Visayas for 500 years whereas it has been in Mindanao for about 200 years. However, the church existed only in the coastal towns of Northern Mindanao (Zamboanga, Cagayan, Butuan, Caraga). The southern part (5 Cotabato and 5 Davao provinces)...
Spain evangelized Luzon and Visayas when Urdaneta, Legaspi occupied Manila in the late 1500s. The mission work was uninterrupted for 500 years. The Jesuits were the first and only Mindanao missionaries beginning the middle of the 1600s. They pulled out two times; in the late...
For 375 years (1521-1896), Spain did not create a free public school system in our nation. Filling up the vacuum, the church opened parochial schools in parishes. The church and parochial schools were in the town poblacion and only children whose parents live in the...
I think the government made a mistake, when in 2016, it added grades 7 and 8 before students can enter high school. Five (5) very bad effects came out when grade 7 was opened in 2016. (1) Thousands of first year high school teachers, lost...
[gallery columns="1" size="full" ids="35357,35358,35359"] We have been bombarded with election trivia, fake news and garbage since January 2022. We suffered from mental and visual indigestion. We drowned in TV, newspaper, cellphones and social media election garbage. This will be my last election notes until 2025. These were...
Some say the 1949 Presidential election was the worst ever. The 1950-51 Senate hearings about the 1949 election showed that in some Mindanao barrios, there were more voters than number of residents and that some registered voters did vote even when they had died before...
There are about 120 million Filipinos and around 67 million are registered voters. About 45% of these voters are above 18 years old but below 30. They belong to the youth vote. However, many more belonging to the youth vote are not registered voters for...
We were discovered by Magellan on March 16, 1521 when he accidentally landed in Limasawa, Leyte. Before this date, we had no elections. The ruler of the Balangay tribe was the strongest in battle who had killed all his rivals. From March 16, 1521 to December...
During Holy Week, most TV stations, YouTube, Netflix, etc. show religious films. My favorite films during Holy Week are: first, “Quo Vadis” a 1951 MGM movie starring Robert Taylor as Marcus Vinicius, Deborrah Kerr as Christian slave, Lygia and Peter Ustinor as Emperor Nero. The...
I was eleven years old in 1952 (70 years ago) when I first noticed that Holy Week activities are different from the daily church services. It begins on Ash Wednesday and ends 40 days later on Palm Sunday. The 40-day period is a reminder of...