Apostle

Sense and Sensibility : The apostle of Mindanao

Bambi Harper
Inquirer News Service

MOST of us believe that the evangelization of the Philippines began with the Augustinians and Fr. Andres de Urdaneta, who came with Miguel Lopez de Legaspi in 1567. However, Fr. Francisco Colin, S.J., in his "Labor Evangelica de los Obreros de la Compania de Jesus en las Islas Filipinas," calls St. Francis Xavier the first stone in the foundation of the Society in the Philippines, stating that the saint came in 1546. He preached in Mindanao (it is believed in Davao) in the months of September, October and November. In the 1890s, rumors persisted that the boulder that served as his altar could be found on the beach of Pundagitan beside the Cabo S. Agustin, which is the reason the inhabitants at one time called it Punta Altar. There's a sense of poetic justice here that after the Jesuits returned in 1859 from their expulsion, they were assigned the Mindanao missions.

In the summer of 1546, a "caracoa" ship with St. Francis on board was traveling from Amboina to Ternate over the curling waves of the Moluccan Sea in danger of being wrecked. There were all sorts of dangers in this area: not merely typhoons but pirates lay in wait for ships. The vessel was making its difficult path between mountains of rough waters and resounding thunder. Harsh shouts from the sailors could be heard at each surge of a wave that threatened to overwhelm them as well as prayers below deck so that the bilge wouldn't go under water. After an arduous day's run, the lookout could not even see the other vessel that came in convoy. Its patron, the merchant Juan Galvan of hairy beard and thinning hair, had drowned in the waters of Ecuador.

From Amboina to Malacca, the ship passed by the south of Mindanao and land was sighted in this horseshoe-shaped cove half enclosed by the bay of Illana. Landing here the saint preached during those 18 days in Malay to a crowd of heretics and converts. These were the difficult and hard journeys of the evangelization missions.

St. Francis is also known as the Apostle of the Indies, having served in Ternate from 1546 to 1547. It was that he was seen sleeping on a cot made of the roots of trees and a pillow of "cabo negro" [a kind of palm leaf made into rope]. Many converts were won after long debates in the language of the place. Tradition tells the miraculous story of the crab that found a crucifix on the bottom of the ocean and clutching it between his claws returned it to St. Francis on the beach at Tamalo.

St. Francis on Jan. 26 1548 wrote from Cochin to the Jesuit mother house in Rome: "I left the city of Moluco (Terrenate) for some islands that are 60 leagues from Moluco that are called the Isles of the Moro; in these isles were many places of Christians and many days had passed that no one (priest) had visited them because they were very isolated from India and because the natives had killed a secular priest who had gone there.

"On those islands, I baptized many creatures that I found to baptize and I remained there for three months. During that time, I visited many Christian settlements that brought me much consolation in the same manner that I brought them consolation.

"These islands are very dangerous because of the many internecine wars. They are savages, lacking books, nor do they know how to read or write and are people who poison those they don't like and in this manner they kill many. It is a rough land, mountainous and very difficult to walk. They lack material sustenance, wheat and wine.

"They do not know meat or any game animals. There are some pigs and there are many wild boars. Many places lack potable water. There is rice in abundance and many trees called "gagueros" (Pastells says these could be buri or coconut trees) that give bread and wine and other trees that from their bark clothes are made.

"There are on these islands a people called Tabaros that are gentiles that the pagans derive all their pleasure from killing them … as well as many Christians. (It seems that there were Christian communities in Mindanao converted by the Portuguese. Pastells, who heavily annotated Fr Francisco Colin's "Labor Evangelica" and whose footnotes are sometimes more interesting than the text, tells us that the Christians in Mindanao were converted by Francisco de Castro, captain of a ship that came from Moluco which then belonged to a certain Galvao. In the fort of Terrenate were women from Mindanao who were Christians, married and had children with Portuguese.)

"One of these islands is subject to earthquakes and the reason is that on this island is a range that continuously spews fire and much ash. There were no hurricanes while I was there… For you to imagine how great are the earthquakes on that land, on the day of San Miguel while I was saying Mass, the earth trembled so horribly that I was afraid that the altar would be knocked down.

"Having visited all the Christian settlements I returned to Moluco where I stayed another three months."