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Priest´s 80 Years Of Ministry Marked By Seminary Work And Beatifications

Updated: August 25, 2005 05:00 PM GMT
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The oldest priest in the Philippines looks back on his life as a sequence of "strange" events that led him to join the Jesuits, prepare young men for the priesthood and promote martyrs for beatification.

Father Juan Maria Ledesma, a Jesuit theologian set to turn 100 on Sept. 5, said he is looking forward to his upcoming birthday celebration with bishops, priests and former students. His Jesuit community has set the celebration for Sept. 8. Thursdays are when they hold their weekly community liturgy.

One of his former students, Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales of Manila, is scheduled to lead the special Mass and dinner at Villa San Miguel, where the late Cardinal Jaime Sin lived in Mandaluyong City, east of Manila.

Father Ledesma taught dogmatic theology, Philippine history, and English, Greek, Latin and Spanish before he retired from teaching in 1989, at age 84.

Speaking to UCA News on Aug. 18, he said the Jesuits and various seminary communities have been his only family as he has been without a biological family most of his life. His Filipina mother, Alfonsa Ledesma, died just months after he was born in Iloilo province, central Philippines, in 1905. His father was a U.S. army sergeant in the Philippines.

Father Ledesma regards his mixed parentage as the start of many "strange" situations that he said helped to shape his life and vocation.

He recalled that as his father could not take care of him, an American Jesuit priest placed him in Hospicio de San Jose, an orphanage run by the Spanish Sisters of Charity. When he was 5 years old, his father left him permanently after the U.S. government refused to issue a visa for a Filipino-American "mestizo." Hence he spent the next 10 years in Hospicio.

He said he was about 8 years old when a Spanish couple came to adopt him. "I cried and cried," he recalled, "so they returned me to the orphanage." There he continued to attend classes.

He was chosen to read from Spanish spiritual books during meals at the orphanage because he was "quite good" in languages. As a reward, the nuns would give him extra food, but before eating he would go to the chapel to pray. The orphanage chaplain noticed his piety, and when he turned 15, the chaplain helped him get into Manila´s San Carlos Seminary.

After high school, he transferred to the Jesuits´ San Jose Seminary in Manila. Father Ledesma remembers that when he turned 19, in September 1924, he told the rector, his superior: "I am 19 years old today, so you´d better take me into the Jesuits before I get too old."

He joined the Jesuits the following month, on Oct. 17, 1924. After finishing philosophy, he taught at the congregation´s Ateneo high school. Later he taught liberal arts at San Jose Seminary, where he said he "discovered his lifelong ambition to teach seminarians."

He was then sent to study theology at the Jesuits´ Woodstock College in Maryland, in the United States. Before leaving the Philippines, he adopted his mother´s family name and dropped all claims for U.S. citizenship. After his priestly ordination on June 21, 1936, his superiors sent him for doctoral studies in theology at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

When he returned to the Philippines, he went back to his "first love," teaching seminarians at San Jose.

Jesuit Father James Reuter remembers Father Ledesma as "the kindest" of all his teachers when he was in the seminary during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines in the Second World War (1939-1945). Father Reuter is now executive secretary of the Philippine bishops´ National Office of Mass Media.

In the early 1970s, Indonesian Jesuits asked the Philippines for a seminary professor, and Father Ledesma was sent to teach there for three years.

He was back teaching at San Jose Seminary when the late Archbishop Felixberto Camacho Flores of Agana, Guam, sought help from the Jesuits in preparing the cause for beatification of Diego Luis de San Vitores, a Spanish Jesuit priest killed in 1672 by indigenous people after he baptized the child of a chieftain in Tumon, Guam.

Father Ledesma, proficient in various languages, was sent to Guam where he spent two years documenting the martyr´s life. He continued researching for eight more years in Germany, Mexico, Rome and Spain before submitting his reports to the postulator for the cause. Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Diego on Oct. 6, 1985.

While researching on Blessed Diego´s life, Father Ledesma said he learned about Pedro Calungsod, a young Filipino catechist from "somewhere in the Visayas" (central Philippines) who was killed together with Blessed Diego. Father Ledesma said he "was told to drop" Calungsod´s name from his reports "so as not to delay the cause" of Blessed Diego.

In 1993, Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu asked Father Ledesma´s help in the cause for the beatification of the Filipino catechist, and the priest turned over the material he had previously found. Pope John Paul II beatified Blessed Pedro on May 15, 2000.

Father Ledesma has dedicated most of his time since he retired from teaching to writing and raising funds for poor seminarians´ studies. He said he chose this apostolate to make a difference in what he called the "weakest part" of the Catholic Church, its priests.

He has written 20 editions of the book, "My Travel Companion," which he sells to raise funds for 10 seminaries around the country. So far, 915,000 copies have been published.

His sight and hearing have been failing, but his caregivers at the Jesuits´ Xavier House in Santa Ana, Manila, help him keep in touch with benefactors through mail.

Another of his students, Bishop Benjamin Almoneda of Daet, who is chairperson of the Episcopal Commission on Seminaries, has agreed to preach at the Sept. 8 Mass honoring Father Ledesma.

END

(Accompanying photos available at here)

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