Oratio and Imperata are more than 2,000-year-old Latin words. Oratio is the source of the English word oration -- a formal speech given in a special/ceremonial occasion. Today, it relates to church prayers. Imperata relates to empire (Roman — imperial, emperor, imperium — suggesting awesome...
On Monday, May 17, 2021, senior citizens nationwide rose as one and met in designated places to confront and destroy the world’s worst danger. The battle began earlier with the vaccine jabbings of the frontliners - police, military, health and hospital workers. This started the...
One of the most beautiful church traditions is the yearly fiesta of the patron saint of a barrio, municipio, ciudad or GKK capilla. Sometimes, the name of a town tells us where the first settlers came from. For example, the original settlers of Compostela, Davao...
The Religious Orders and Congregations (priests, brothers, nuns) played a very special role in the 500th year of evangelization. We became an American colony from 1898 to 1946. The Americans focused on education and self-governance but not evangelization. When they made their Constitution in 1787,...
Beautiful religious traditions and customs evolved over 500 years. Some are gone, some are disappearing, and some still evolving. A: Gone Latin Mass. 6 PM church bells ring for Angelus. Everyone near the church stop moving until prayers are finished, even cars, caretelas, etc. Women in...
Magellan's arrival on March 16, 1521 was not accidental. Many events happened thousands of years ago involving East and West science, technology and religion. About 4,000 years ago, Arcadians, Babylonians, Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese developed astrology (how stars affect human events) and astronomy (study...
Saints are men and women who are saints with a capital ‘S’ because they were so extraordinarily holy here on earth that the church has officially recognized them as being in heaven. The long process by which it becomes a capital ‘S’ is called canonization....
On September 20, 1519, his 260 sailors, chaplain, Asiatic guides/interpreters who used to be with the Portuguese fleet left Spain aboard 5 ships, flagship Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, and Santiago. Magellan expected some misunderstandings between him and the crew who were all Spaniards. He...
The travel and airline industries were hard hit by COVID-19. They hope that with the vaccines and the natural decreasing number of cases by September 2021 things will go back to normal. Because of the closedown, many tourist signs in English in Asia and Europe...
I was a judge from 1985 to 2006. In the early 1990s, a young man asked if I can solemnize his marriage at the Davao General Hospital (now the Southern Philippines Medical Center). He said his sick wife who was pregnant pleaded that they should...