It was a blessing for me to join Bishop Cantú and more than 80 clergy and faithful to visit the Philippines and Vietnam, my native country, on a two-week pilgrimage in January 2023. Originally slated to take place in 2021, when the Church in the Philippines was set to celebrate 500 years of Christianity, it was postponed because of the COVID pandemic. We spent our first week in the Philippines, the only Catholic nation in Asia, and the following week in Vietnam. Both countries offered us memorable experiences that I will cherish and reflect upon in my heart.
Santo Niño Celebrations in Cebu, the Philippines.
Filipino faith and religiosity are expressed through public liturgies, popular devotions, and communal traditions. We saw it clearly in the Santo Niño celebrations at its namesake basilica in Cebu. The crowds gathered in the church and around the jumbo screens in the surrounding streets to follow the live-streamed Masses.
We witnessed massive crowds of mostly young adults expressing a fervent, joyous faith. The city police estimated that three million people had joined the Santo Niño procession in Cebu on January 14th. Navigating the perilous heavy traffic in this city during the festivities while our group attempted to reach the Cebu Provincial Capital for our official welcome reception was quite an experience!
The Feast of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila
Filipino Catholics also have great devotion to the suffering Christ and to Mary under different titles. Before traveling to Cebu, we visited the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Manila, named for its life figure of Christ carved from black wood which is believed to be miraculous. A special feast celebrating the Black Nazarene, which took place on January 9, drew about 80,000 devotees to the streets of Manila.
Shrines
We were also impressed by their devotion to the Blessed Mother at Baclaran Shrine of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage (Antipolo Church), and at the Simala Shrine, where long lines of devotees sought healing through the intercession of Our Lady of Lindogon in front of her miraculous image. Hundreds of crutches and about a dozen wheelchairs have been left at the shrine, symbolizing the occurrences of supposed miracles. Lastly, during our visit to Saint Joseph’s Shrine in Las Piñas, we saw an organ made mostly of bamboo pipes, which was another highlight.
While the pilgrims continued their visit in the Philippines, Bishop Cantú and I traveled to Vietnam, joining some of our priests from San José who had joined us on the second leg of the pilgrimage. While the Philippines is a nation with more than 86 percent of its population being Catholic, Vietnam is a more religiously diverse country where Catholics make up a minority of around 7 percent of the population. The Church there coexists with well-established Buddhism, Confucianism, and indigenous religions such as Caodaim and Hoà Hảo Buddhism.
Shrine of Our Lady of La Vang
We visited Saigon, and Huế, the old imperial city, in addition to a few more adjacent towns. Celebrating holy Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of La Vang in central Vietnam was a high point of this visit. The Blessed Mother is believed to have appeared to the persecuted Catholics in this area in 1798. Today, at that location, the ruins of the old basilica-shrine destroyed during the Vietnam War, contrasted against the new one currently under construction, attests to the suffering and resilience of the Church through waves of persecutions. Vietnam has gifted the Church with an astounding 130,000 martyrs in about 250 years alone.
Mai Tâm House of Hope and Naza Consolation Hospice
The visit to Mai Tâm House of Hope and Naza Consolation Hospice touched me the most. Mai Tâm House, run by the Camillian Order and supported by several organizations worldwide, cares for orphans and children infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. We were delighted by the children, who happily sang and danced in welcoming Bishop Cantú and other pilgrims. The bishop also spent time praying with each person in the Naza Consolation Hospice, managed by the same Camillian Order.
Notre Dame Cathedral, Saigon, Vietnam
The trip in Vietnam concluded with an English Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon on the first day of the Tết celebrations. Fireworks filled the sky as all rang in the Lunar New Year. Our Southeast Asia pilgrimage allowed us to visit and pray at historic sacred sites and to encounter peoples in their native lands, cultural and religious traditions, and social milieux, through which we experienced that which is holy, the light that gives meaning and purpose to their lives.
Written by Father Hao Dinh for Valley Catholic
Paid for on the backs of the working people of San Jose whose offertory contributions are taxed by the diocese. These princes of the church live in comfort and do little that’s effective to promote the Gospel. What has Cantu done to make Archbishop Mitty a real Catholic school instead of a fake Catholic school?
Cantu should focus on his own diocese. That’s his responsibility. There’s a lot of work to be done that he’s not doing.
This is an example of an uncharitable comment made publicly against a Catholic Bishop.
I, for one, and I’m probably decidedly not alone in this, think that bishops should be held accountable for doing their jobs. It’s Bishop Cantu’s job to ensure that Mitty is a Catholic school. He’s not doing his job. Mitty isn’t a Catholic school. They teach heresy. They promote LGBTQ ideology. When bishops don’t do their job, they need to be called out on it. They have lifetime appointments like Supreme Court justices, but unlike justices, the bishops don’t have to do any important work nor be held accountable yet they still get to keep their positions.
Let’s fix the factual error first. They do not have lifetime appointments. They need to offer their resignation at age 75.
If you are a parent and you removed your child from Mitty because of the teaching of error, you are bound to let the diocese know. Or if you made the decision to let your child stay in spite of it, you should let them know.
If you are just a gossip and judging things that you do not have first hand experience of, you should encourage whoever does have the first hand experience to report it.
After that, it is up to the judgement of those in charge. They usually will not get back to you on what action was taken. Sometimes for various reasons they might wait out a contract. The person when rebuked may have submitted to the rebuke. They are not going to tell you.
Yes, they have lifetime appointments. They are bishops for life. They will be taken care of by the church for life. They will want for nothing for the rest of their life. The only way they can lose it is to diddle a boy or some seminarians, like McCarrick did, but even he continued enjoying the perks for decades while everyone knew what he was up to because nobody wanted to move against such a powerful man who raised and controlled millions of dollars.
I know someone who was a Mitty employee. The accusations made on this website against the school are 100% true. Bishop McGrath was informed and he did nothing. Bishop Cantu was informed about the current president of the school before she began her job. He could have nixed it. He didn’t.
I don’t trust bishops. They are just politicians and bureaucrats to me.
You are allowed not to trust whoever you do not trust.
But nobody else has to not trust them because you don’t.
and it is sinful to spread distrust of them.
If you trust the Lord, what more do you need?
I had a bad bishop once and if he said something fishy, I had to verify it.
This was before the internet so It involved asking priests, looking in books, getting Vatican and NCCB documents.
It was a lot of work and stress.
It is a lot easier now.
Bishop Mc Grath was also given proof and warned about a seminarian who was pushing “same-sex:” marriage right before he was ordained, but he went ahead and ordained him anyway.
They are held accountable by God, not the Internet.
I do not know about this specific pilgrimage but usually the lay people pay for their own trips and the pilgrimage companies give the trip free to clergy.
Pilgrimages are not given “free” to clergy by tour companies; laity who go on a pilgrimage are charged more than it actually costs to subsidize the clerics’ travel costs. This pilgrimage, which seems to have involved a large number of clergy, probably had the diocese kick in a portion of the cost.
What does what a Bishop does with the schools in his diocese have to do with whether or not there are other good things a Bishop can do? The two are unrelated. Bishops can (and do) walk and chew gum at the same time. I have a feeling that if he closed the school entirely, you’d find something else to complain about.
About the funding for this trip and its pastoral purpose: I’m not sure that the diocese is funding this through parish contributions. Do we know this for sure? Maybe they got the airfare donated and stayed with local priests or families? And wouldn’t you say that this visit might help a priest be inspired and provide pastoral care for his Pilipino and Viet Names members? And if the priest is himself born in one of those countries or descended from someone who is, wouldn’t it possibly deepen their faith and the knowledge that they are appreciated for their pastoral work? Would we raise these kinds of objections if they were Irish priests going to Ireland or Italian priests going to Italy?
While his Excellency was on vacation, the school put on a play which mocks Christ, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee…
That musical has characters who are gay dads. Totally inappropriate for a Catholic school to produce that show. Thank you for the example of how Bishop Cantu is letting LGBT propaganda be spread at Mitty High School.
East Timor is also in Asian and also Catholic (98 percent) so no the Philippines is not the only Catholic country in Asia
Is this a higher priority than stopping the abortion-promoting gender-confusing president of Mitty High School, the only diocesan high school?
Not many Catholics realize a bishop’s chief concern is to make it to retirement age without having the diocese fall apart on his watch. They aren’t appointed to be bold heralds of the Gospel. They aren’t appointed to innovate. They aren’t appointed to be decisive. They are appointed to keep up appearances and to keep the donations coming in. When they hit age 75 most breathe a sigh of relief that they made it.
That is ridiculous.
Mitty grad here. Only now, over 15 years later and more wise and mature and knowledgeable about my faith, do I realize what evil I was taught under the guise of goodness and truth and “being Christian” at Mitty. I wish the bishop at the time had stepped in to fix the school. Would have saved me grief and misdirection if the school had pointed me towards truth instead of falsehood. I trusted my teachers and the administration and campus ministry leaders. My trust was misplaced, but what did I know as a teenager?
What did they teach that was wrong?