Changing of the guard

After over a decade at the helm of the Cebu Archdiocesan Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, Msgr. Carlito Pono bade farewell to the commission members the other night with a final meeting and a sumptuous meal. Although he insists that he still has no formal appointment to take over, commission member Fr. Brian Brigoli is expected to carry on the torch, as it were, from Monsignor Pono.

It will be up to history to judge the work of the commission during the tenure of the good monsignor, who also administers the Talamaban parish, but it was made clear in the final meeting that much still needs to be done. Monsignor Pono wished for the next commission, for one, to finally establish heritage councils at the parish level in order to continue safeguarding the remaining tangible and intangible heritage of the church.

Fr. Brian, who recently moved to Carcar City and will probably move back to Cebu City soon has his work cut out for him, as it were. It helps tremendously that His Eminence Ricardo

Cardinal Vidal sent him to the University of Sto. Tomas to obtain the master’s degree in heritage conservation studies as a prior condition to his formal ordination to the priesthood. At last, and with no offense to the outgoing commission chair, the new batch of commission members will finally be headed by someone who is trained in conservation work.

Monsignor Pono, let it be said, entered the work of the commission at a time when it was still in its infancy not just in the Archdiocese of Cebu but pretty much everywhere in the Philippines, where no priests had been trained to handle heritage work before. After going through a learning curve that involved many if not most of the members of the commission, a set of accomplishments mark Pono’s leave. The most obvious of this is the Cathedral Museum of Cebu, which was inaugurated in 2006 but which still needs much improvement and a good dose of fund-raising and income generation to support and maintain its operations.

Years from now, commission members will talk of the problems that they faced most especially in the gilding of the retablo mayor of Argao that now looks like a Shaolin temple altar or the destruction of Argao’s cemetery portals. But the members, too, will look with pride at the successful production of the pioneering coffee table book “Balaanong Bahandi: Sacred

Treasures of the Archdiocese of Cebu” in 2009 and the overwhelming support of so many heritage advocates, supporters and the curious who bought copies ahead of the book’s printing. It was an inspiring moment for all of us that the trust was given to the curatorial board of the museum as well as the archdiocesan commission.

There are still many problems that remain, foremost of which is the absence of a revolving fund that will allow the commission to respond faster to calamities like the earthquake of 2013 or the destruction wrought by supertyphoon Yolanda. The commission, like all church commissions functions with volunteers who shell out their own money and it is to them, especially those commission members who went out of their way—or literally drove their cars north and south, east and west of the width and breadth of Cebu to answer the call for heritage vigilance—that the work of the commission must be dedicated.

I can only wish Fr. Brian and the incoming members of the commission all the best as they continue the work that His Eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, Monsignor Pono and the members of the commission undertook to accomplish. With the help of Archbishop Jose Palma, the work for the heritage of the church will continue to move and to blossom with you, Fr. Brian, at the helm. Carpe diem!