No Mass at ‘desecrated’ Misamis Church
JIMENEZ, MISAMIS OCCIDENTAL—Unlike in the past when church bells would toll early on Sundays to call parishioners to attend Mass, all was quiet on Sunday at the 19th-century St. John the Baptist Parish Church here, days after Ozamiz Archbishop Martin Jumoad closed the church following its desecration by a vlogger.
Church authorities padlocked the doors of the church on Aug. 5, after a vlogger’s video spitting into its holy water font went viral.
Among the few who dropped by the church at 8 a.m. on Sunday, Maria Imelda Quiapo, of Barangay Santa Cruz here, said she felt “emotional” when she saw that the doors were closed, having been accustomed to hearing the church bells ringing early in the morning of Sundays.
Another parishioner arrived with her husband and two kids in tow, meaning to celebrate her spouse’s birthday by attending Mass, only to be dismayed to see the doors of the church closed.
Although she had attended one of the nightly vigils conducted outside the church’s closed door as penance to ask for the reopening of the church, she had hoped there would be a Sunday Mass in time for her husband’s birthday. Instead, the family traveled to Panaon town, around four kilometers away, to hear Mass at the Holy Cross Parish there.
Roselle Gallos, a parish worker for five years, said the church used to teem with people on Sundays and was sad it was empty on Sunday.
Night vigil
Jumoad on Saturday urged the parishioners to join the nightly vigil to show that they were really longing for the reopening of the church in Jimenez.
He said Church leaders would meet on Aug. 12 to discuss its reopening.
“We are not playing here. We are serious in this matter because it concerns our faith,” he said.
He said it was not a matter of just throwing away the desecrated holy water font and replacing it with a new one. “It’s not as easy as that, that’s why we needed to work it out so that there would be reconsecration of the church,” Jumoad said.
On Aug. 8, the Jimenez municipal council passed a resolution declaring content creator Christine Vinter Medalla, who goes by “Thine Medalla” and “Marry Bella” on social media, a persona non grata “for publicly and maliciously disrespecting sacred and cultural sites in Jimenez town.”
The resolution denounced her behavior in the strongest terms, saying “no amount of publicity or apology could erase the deliberate nature and public impact of the act.”
The St. John the Baptist Parish Church, commonly known as Jimenez Church, has been a late-19th-century church declared as one of the country’s National Cultural Treasures in 2001.
