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SUBIC
BAY FREE PORT— Worship and warship met here by chance
on Sunday as two groups—one arriving for war exercises
and the other for a peace mission—shared the waters of
Subic Bay.
Separated only by a short strip of restaurants that line
up Subic’s waterfront road, thousands of devotees of the
Virgin Mary camped at the Boardwalk Park for the “Subic
Marian Peace Regatta” while vessels from the US Navy’s
USS Essex battle group rested unobtrusively at the
nearby Alava Pier.
The
Marian fluvial procession, composed of some 20 yachts
and sailboats bearing various images of the Virgin Mary,
went around Subic Bay as priests onboard blessed the
water.
As they
rounded the bay to return to Boardwalk Park, the “peace
boats” passed by the berthed warships that included the
amphibious landing ships USS Juneau and USS Tortuga and
the nuclear-powered submarine USS Connecticut.
“Irony
of ironies,” said Arthur Earl Dumaguing, a news
correspondent based in Zambales, as he clicked away with
his camera to record the juxtaposition of peace and war
boats.
While
the scene provided a striking contrast, it was
unintentional.
The
landing ships had arrived early that day from the joint
RP-US Phiblex war exercises in Ternate, Cavite, while
the submarine docked in Subic on Thursday reportedly for
the crew’s rest and recreation.
On
Friday, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney visited USS
Connecticut before the boat’s crew conducted a community
relations activity at a public school in
Olongapo
City.
On the
other hand, the Marian peace regatta was held in
celebration of the centenary of the coronation of Our
Lady of La Naval de Manila, the first canonically
crowned Marian image in the country and in
Asia, organizers said.
Father
Audie Mozo, parish priest of the San Roque chapel in the
Subic free Port, said the Marian regatta also coincided
with the silver jubilee of the Diocese of Iba, and the
400th year of the evangelization of Zambales.
The
peace regatta, which featured several other Marian
images aside from Our Lady of La Naval, started at 1
p.m. on Sunday and included a prayer conference, a
healing session, a celebration of the Holy Mass, and a
candlelight procession later in the evening.
The La
Naval image, as its title suggests, has its roots in
naval history. It assumed its historic significance in
the battles of La Naval in 1646 when combined
Filipino-Spanish forces triumphed over Dutch marauders
in five naval battles on Philippine waters.
In 1662,
the Church council declared the image miraculous,
leading to its crowning on October 5, 1907 on orders of
Pope Pius X. |
