Bucag
THE parish priest of Santa Fe, Bantayan Island, Fr. Roy Bucag, on Sunday, gave a fiery, almost hour-long homily expressing anger and dismay over the Isla Festival Issue.
Upset with Mayor Jose Esgana’s threat to charge him with child abuse for including children in the aurora dawn procession, he said if there was any child, even just one, for which he is guilty of child abuse, “I will immediately step down and leave as parish priest.”
In repeating his opposition to the timing of the Isla Music Festival on Holy Week, he said the event encourages some people to get drunk and “get high” on drugs because they choose “lingaw” (fun) over a solemn observance.
To make his point, Fr. Bucag stepped away from the pulpit and copied the gesture of a shabu sniffer by swiping his finger under his nose and dancing a jig with one hand in the air.
The mock impressions he also made of drunks in the street scenes he said he witnessed in last year’s Holy Week in Santa Fe drew laughter as well from the crowd.
“It doesn’t matter if the event is held in a secluded place or 2,000 meters from the church, people will go to it and you will see changes in their behavior,” he said in Cebuano.
He then thundered away at the need to “give to Cesar what is Cesar’s, and give to God what belongs to God.”
To remember the spirit of the Holy Week, he said one needs a “simple, humble, contrite heart.”
At the end of the homily, his tone softened and he calmed down to lead the people in singing the church hymn “Change my heart, oh God.”
With the extended homily, the 8 a.m. mass which started at 8:30 ended at 10 a.m.