Past Forward
More tragedies after Oslob?
By Jobers Bersales
Cebu Daily News
First Posted 12:28:00 03/27/2008
The dawn fire that gutted the 160-year-old convent and church in Oslob last Tuesday should serve as an eye-opener to the Catholic hierarchy and the faithful concerning the dangers that lurk behind these old structures that badly need rewiring. This tragic loss of an important heritage of the Augustinian friar-builders, Bishop Santos Gomez Marañon and Fray Julian Bermejo, in southern Cebu will not be the last if nothing is done soon to raise funds to rehabilitate all of these glorious structures built largely by Filipino masons and carpenters during the latter half of the Spanish colonial period in Cebu.
Whatever caused the Oslob fire, which was said to have started in one of the rooms of the rectory, I will venture to suspect that electric wiring may be a factor in the tragedy. The news reached us in the early hours of yesterday as wailing sirens of fire trucks raced across from where we are currently doing the third round of archaeological excavations across the rectory of Boljoon. I cannot help but imagine the tremendous loss that would befall Cebu if Boljoon Church and its rectory, the only National Cultural Treasure in the province to be declared by the National Museum, will go the way of Oslob.
This is not the first fire to visit the church in Oslob. In the late 1950s the entire church was gutted down, leaving only its meter-thick stone walls, when an afternoon fire broke out behind the sacristy due to an electric generator that exploded right after the Mass. Other tragedies followed much later as modernity began to seep into the rectory itself. During my last visit there, sometime in early 2007, I already saw various attempts at renovation that did not adhere to the integrity of the original structure (read: well-intentioned but uninformed tinkering in architecture) doing more damage than if it had been left to age in its glory.
But more than the structure itself is the fact that the rectory is one of only three on record as having been built by the indefatigable Parroco Capitan, Julian Bermejo, who spent time between Boljoon and Oslob as an Augustinian missionary. The old parish records, which would have been a source for Jolly Benitez, the writer assigned to chronicle the history of Oslob in the 55-volume Cebu provincial history project, are all ash now.
Boljoon Church and its convent might, heaven forbid, follow the way of Oslob if nothing is done soon to rewire the entire complex. In the late 1990s, a cost estimate pegged this rewiring at around P2 million. Already the Cebu provincial government and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts are pouring millions into the rehabilitation of the church – a very laudable project. But it is also time for the private sector to do its share and help raise much-needed money to modernize the electrical systems of this national treasure.
There are many other legacies of the past that need to be looked into. Although I am not certain, still I suspect that other churches and convents built by Spanish friars of old all over Cebu are also in need of serious rehabilitation – and soon. Otherwise, Oslob’s loss will not be the last.
|
