[1] Acceptance Address delivered by retired Chief Justice ARTEMIO V. PANGANIBAN during a Eucharistic Celebration on September 18, 2024, at the Manila Cathedral, presided by His Eminence, Jose F. Cardinal Advincula, Archbishop of Manila, who presented him the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award given by His Holiness, Pope Francis,
Your Eminence, Reverend Monsignors, Reverend Fathers, My Sisters and Brothers in Christ.
I do not know what miracles the angels have brought to unworthy and underserving me to qualify me to receive the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Award which, I was told, is the highest granted by the Holy Father to lay persons. Truth to tell, I am just an ordinary worker in the Lord’s Vineyard. However, I was likewise told it was given (1) because of my humble work as President of the Metropolitan Manila Cathedral Basilica Foundation and, (2) because of my journey as a frail servant of our Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently, my response will consist of two parts also: First, to thank all of you who helped to retrofit, restrengthen, restore and renovate the Manila Cathedral (for brevity, let us call them the four Rs). And second, to thank those who plucked me from the abyss of being a Catholic ignoramus to the joy of being an ordinary worker in the Lord’s Vinery.
Appreciation for my coworkers
On the first part, let me say that all of us who participated in the four Rs did not want to announce what we have done because our Lord Jesus taught us in Matthew Chapter 6, Verse 1, thus, “Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your Heavenly Father.” But now, after the Vicar of Christ on earth has recognized our work and after our Shepherd in the Archdiocese had gathered us here, we still fervently hope and pray that we will still have our recompense from our Heavenly Father. Amen?
I requested our host, the Archbishop of Manila, His Eminence, Jose F. Cardinal Advincula, to invite all of us, especially the donors, contractors, architects, owner’s representatives, planning managers, engineers, carpenters, masons, electricians and other coworkers seated on the left side of the Cathedral. This Award belongs to all of you, not just to unworthy me.
Let me recall that it was His Eminence, Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales who led the Manila Cathedral Foundation in bringing down the heavy, 17-ton bells in the swaying belfry and locate them in the new gardens at the right side of the Cathedral. They were replaced by 23 much-lighter, computerized Carillon Bells especially ordered in the Netherlands, then airfreighted here and donated by Bert and Sylvia Lina.
Paving the way for the four “Rs”
I remember too that one of the first things that His Eminence, Luis Antonio G. Cardinal Tagle did upon assuming his office as Cardinal Rosales’ successor was to close the Cathedral lest the structurally weakened Mother Church were, heaven forbid, to topple down, due to an earthquake. Cardinal Chito, as he prefers to be called, texted me his regrets for his inability to fly from Rome to attend our Eucharistic Celebration but he texted me, “I will always treasure the communion and collaboration that I experienced with you and our team. Deciding to close the Cathedral a few weeks after my assumption as Archbishop tore my heart apart. But the safety of our faithful and the spiritual legacy of the Cathedral were non-negotiable priorities. Who could have thought at that time that Pope Francis would come in 2015? No one. But God was preparing us, and the Cathedral warmly welcomed him. May God be glorified always!”
My sisters and brothers in Christ, one of our major problems in pursuing the four Rs was the total absence of an “as-built” plan of the Cathedral. We could not find it in the archives of the Church or of the City of Manila. Thus, we did not know exactly why the marble floors, columns and walls shook even without an earthquake. We did not know how to begin the four Rs and how to raise the necessary funds therefor. Nonetheless, without much ado without any written plans and sometimes without any written requests, our donors gladly took our verbal assurances and gave generously. They were led by five families and companies of (1) Don Ramon Ang and his low-profile daughter Cecil, (2) the late Dr. George S. K. Ty, (the brothers Arthur and Alfred Ty are tied up in a meeting with Toyota top executives from Japan, but their respective spouses, Zandra and Cherry, as well as their sister, Alessandra and her husband Alvin are here with us), (3) the brothers Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel de Ayala (Jaime is in Singapore now, but Fernando together with his wife Kit is with us), (4) the spouses Alberto and Sylvia Lina, as I already mentioned, and a (5) a very generous donor who prefers to remain anonymous up to this day. They and their representatives are seated on the front pews on my left together with my fellow trustees of the Manila Cathedral Foundation.
The other donors and our close friends are seated on the succeeding pews. At this point, I am especially pleased to acknowledge the three hardworking Executive Directors of the Foundation who also served as Pastors of the Manila Cathedral; namely, Msgr. Nestor Cerbo, Msgr. Regie Malicdem and Msgr. Rolly de la Cruz.
Our general contractor was DM Consunji, Inc. led by the genteel Sid Consunji, and his sisters Mrs. Josefa C. Reyes, Mrs. Edwina C. Laperal and Ms. Luz Consuelo Consunji who are here also and who gladly donated their mark ups and margins.
Patience, care and love for the four “Rs”
Let me tell you a little flavor of what they had done. At the recommendation of our Structural Engineer, Dr. Angel Lazaro, our co-workers, under the watchful eyes of Salvador Castro and Nestor Rafols dug under the belly of the Cathedral and discovered that each of the huge supporting columns that are visible inside its center had pyramid-like pilings that needed only a little strengthening. However, the columns themselves had been weakened by time. Thus, they had to be carefully and patiently chipped of their beige marble covers and strengthened with countless rolls of carbon fiber and injected with hundreds of gallons of epoxy. The miracle is that none of the marble covers broke or fragmented such that all of them – repeat, all of them – had been restored to their original places without any breakage or blemish. My friends, please look at them and witness their miraculous restoration.
Our co-workers also carefully chiseled and lifted the marble slabs on Cathedral floor, piece by piece, also without any breakage to lay out drainage canals, install plumbing pipes and electrical fixtures underneath, and then restore the original marble flooring, also without any breakage or blemish. Cracks on the walls were injected with over 120 gallons of epoxy. The same formula of carbon fibers and epoxy was used on the beams and girders of the ceiling and roof. Intrepid laborers hung precipitously in steel cables from the ceiling of the Cathedral’s dome to be able to perform the four Rs therein.
I did not realize how tedious the work of the sound engineers was in enabling the electrified sound to flow flawlessly from the front to the rear with microsecond sound waves to prevent the garbling of homilies. And how the computerization of the lights could produce different moods of worship for different occasions. All these they did as a labor of enduring love for our Cathedral, for our Lord and for His Immaculate Mother who dominate the center of our Mother Church. Let us give our courageous and diligent workers a resounding applause.
Hail to those who helped, inspired and walked with me
Let me now go to my second topic. Seated on the pews on my right are those who helped me, inspired me, and walked with me in my humble spiritual journey, beginning with my children and my extended family, my incumbent and retired brethren in the Supreme Court, my fellow trustees and officers of my treasured Foundation for Liberty and Prosperity, the members of the FLP Scholars Society, and the joyfully praying and singing disciples of the Bukas Loob sa Diyos Covenant Community who, half a century ago, taught my late wife Leni and me how to sing, dance, and praise the Lord, as His original flock did over 2,000 years ago. Mabuhay po kayong lahat!
Let me now acknowledge some brothers and sisters by name. The late Fr. Michael Nolan, chaplain of Far Eastern University in the 1950s (when most of you were not yet born), taught this Catholic ignoramus the three basic prayers, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be. And equally important, he snatched me, as the youngest president ever of the FEU Central Student Organization, from the lures of Marxism to which, as an impoverished lad, I looked up to in my feverish search for economic equality. Moreover, he helped me organize and lead the National Union of Student of the Philippines (NUSP) that battled, ironically for them, the Marxist-leaning student movements at the time. The NUSP has become the largest student organization in our country up to now.
To be hailed also is my late Leni who agreed to be my wife on two conditions: one, to forget my ideological and political aspirations; and two, to bear with her as she struggled to set aside her earlier vocation to be a Benedictine nun, and to understand her difficult role as an obedient wife who still loves our Lord Jesus Christ more than anyone in the world.
Very special thanks to Tita, Alex and Tessie
Permit me also to acknowledge my dear Ambassador Henrietta “Tita” de Villa, the renown Catholic lay leader and our former envoy to the Holy See. She gently ushered me to the inner sanctum of the Church, introduced me to our bishops, and got me elected to leadership roles in the major Catholic lay organizations like the Council of the Laity of the Philippines, the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the Vatican-based Pontifical Council for the Laity, and of course, the Manila Cathedral Foundation.
Let me also recognize the incumbent leader of my official family, Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo who had to forego a prior commitment to attend a judicial conference of the heads of the Constitutional Courts of Southeast Asia in Bangkok, Thailand. The meeting is now ongoing as I speak.
Finally, let me acknowledge my lovely seatmate, Tessie Sy Coson, for honoring my invitations to my official and private functions and events. My late wife Leni and I have admired her since she was my student in commercial law at the Assumption College in the late 1960s and witnessed her rise to the very summit of her career. Our admiration is not because she is the chair of BDO, the largest bank in the Philippines, and not because she leads the wealthiest family in our country. We admire and cherish her not because of, but in spite of being the chair of BDO and in spite of being the wealthiest woman in our country, she has remained simple, modest, unaffected, and unassuming as when I first saw her as my student. Now, she is longer as my student; she has become my cherished mentor in banking, finance, management, and entrepreneurship.
To close my acceptance of this Award, I reiterate the vow I delivered when I first entered the Supreme Court in 1995 without passing through the judicial hierarchy and without holding a public or quasi-public office. I made this vow in a sharing titled “Faith Brought Me to the Supreme Court” that I delivered on October 18, 1995, just a week after I entered the Court, during a huge prayer-meeting of BLD at the Cuneta Astrodome in Pasay City. I uttered, “I hold office by God’s grace, and I pledge to serve Him and our people with fortitude, integrity, competence, and prudence. I dedicate all that I am, and all that I will ever be, to Him who is the Source of everything.”
Tonight, I reiterate the same vow: I dedicate all that I am and all that I will ever be to Him who is the Source of everything.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, please rise and join me in proclaiming to the high heavens and to all the earth, To God Be the Glory.
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