I decided to veer away from economic and business issues for this week’s column, in deference to the weekend All Souls’ Day or All Saints’ Day, when many Filipinos trooped to the cemeteries to remember their departed.
This is also an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite advocacies: building churches. My family and I recently traveled to Spain, on invitation of the Recolletos or Recollects, to see the place where Ezekiel Moreno spent his last days. He was a parish priest of Las Piñas for many years, before he was assigned to another country, and then went back to Monte Agudo in Spain, where he died of cancer. We were shown his room at the church in Monte Agudo, which was well-preserved. It has a hole that allowed him to watch and pray while Mass was going on.
That visit inspired me to revisit our plans for the Santuario de San Ezekiel Moreno in Pulanglupa, Las Piñas City. When the groundbreaking was held in 2011, the plan was for a 700-seating capacity, but, when it was finished, the capacity reached 750 seats, expandable to 1,000.
Santuario de San Ezekiel Moreno is now a work in progress. In addition to the inspiration I got from the trip to Spain, public reception also encouraged me to expand and improve the church way beyond the original plans. The church is not located at the center of heavily populated communities, yet, in recent weeks, it had attracted as many as 900 churchgoers.
It is the fourth church that I have built since 2010, and I am now going back to the first three, also for further improvement and expansion. These are the Savannah City Church in Iloilo, with about a thousand
seating capacity and is the centerpiece of the community’s Village Center, where residents gather for celebration, fun and leisure; the Santuario Madonna del Divino Amore at Evia in Alabang, which can also seat a thousand; and the Maia Alta in Antipolo, Rizal.
When Santuario de San Ezekiel Moreno neared completion, I thought of building three or four more churches. Now, I plan to build churches for the rest of my life. Among the possible sites for the new churches include Cebu, Malolos (Bulacan), General Trias (Cavite) and Lipa (Batangas).
At the Crosswinds in Tagaytay, where I planted 30,000 pine trees to develop a Swiss-inspired residential community, I plan to build a church that, while small, will be a very beautiful structure, which will stand out and become a landmark in Tagaytay. Actually, I want it to become the prettiest church in the Philippines. My daughter Camille is involved in this project, which will sit on top of a hill.
Initially, we used in-house architects from Vista Land and its subsidiaries, but, now, we are hiring outside architects and designers, who are experts in church construction and design.
All of the churches will be built on land that we own, because it would be very expensive if we have to buy the sites.
When I was young I dreamed of building homes. And, now, I feel personal satisfaction every time a family moves into a house that I built. For more than three decades I have built more than 200,000 houses for people, yet each church that I complete fills me with joy that is a hundredfold the gladness that I feel when I build a house for people.
I think it’s because building houses for people fulfills one of the basic needs in this life, where parents and children can stay together. On the other hand, a house dedicated to the Lord serves as a special place where people can communicate with their Creator, where they can find refuge and receive the kind of comfort that even the most elegant mansions cannot provide.
Filipinos are known to be a religious people and, especially for the poor, often the church is the only place to go to during crises. They serve as special places for meditation and calming experience, as well as family bonding. This is especially true in recent days, because of the calamities that hit the Philippines. Our people need to be close to churches where they can find refuge, too.
Building churches serves as the spiritual side of the advocacies of the Sipag Foundation, which is undertaking livelihood and environmental programs.
To be continued
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