Missioner praises ´people power´ for building up church

Published Date: October 26, 2009

The last surviving member of a pioneering group of Italian missioners says it was Filipinos´ cooperativeness that made the early days of his mission to the country easy.

Stigmatine Father Romolo Bertoni talks with a couple of nuns
at the Five Wounds of Our Lord Parish in Las Pinas City

Father Romolo Bertoni of the Congregation of the Sacred Stigmatines said the Five Wounds of Our Lord Parish in Las Pinas City he helped to found has been run mostly by parishioners.

The priest only had to celebrate Mass, direct catechism classes and organize social services, he said.

“Soon we felt we only had to approve what parishioners wanted to do, making us mere witnesses to the good that was going on,” the missioner said recently on the 25th anniversary of the arrival of the Stigmatines to the Philippines.

From the start, Filipinos were “welcoming,” willing to serve God and to associate with “newcomers,” the priest said. People volunteered as lectors and choir members, and sent their young boys to help as altar servers, he recalled.

Community is what makes the Church, said 73-year-old Father Bertoni, who is also superior of the Stigmatine seminary in Carmona, Cavite, south of Manila.

Five Wounds parish was founded in October 1984 by the congregation who came to the country at the invitation of the late Cardinal Jaime Sin.

On Oct. 9, Father Romolo Bertoni celebrated a Mass with six confreres to commemorate the arrival of first Stigmatines. About 350 people attended the event.

Girls animate the Mass marking the silver jubilee anniversary
of the Stigmatine congregation’s Philippine mission

Parish pastoral council secretary Lisa del Rosario, 64, says the missioner is too modest about his achievements, saying the Stigmatine priests paved the way for parishioners to serve by building a community.

“We were scattered, not really knowing one another, and they taught us to care for the poor,” she told UCA News.

Nearly half of the 80,000 parishioners are poor, according to Father Bertoni.

Another parishioner, Rebecca Mendoza, said priests´ regular visits to depressed areas inspired parishioners to participate in building up the church community.

“Men of deep prayer” readily went out of their convent and got soaked in flood waters to be one with the poor, bringing relief goods, she recalled.

The congregation runs Kasambuhay (sharing one life) foundation that finances deep wells, health services and day-care centers for poor communities with funds from benefactors in Italy, and from parishioners and friends.

It supports 2,000 students from elementary to college level and offers relief during natural disasters.

The Stigmatine congregation was founded by Saint Gaspar Bertoni, in Verona, Italy in 1816.

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