First priest from Homonhon ordained

Jonathan Pading was ordained as the first Catholic priest from Homonhon Island in Guiuan town, Eastern Samar.

Borongan Bishop Crispin Varquez officiated the ordination of Pading.

The ceremony was supposed to be held in historic Homonhon but the diocese decided to hold it instead at the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral in Borongan due to bad weather.

“I’m happy and humbled with this occasion in my life. I do not claim as the first priest from Homonhon but I’m thankful to the Lord for sharing His very self, especially His priesthood,” the 30year-old Pading said in a Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) News post.

In his homily, Varquez gave Pading this advice as he begins his ministry: “We have to be happy in proclaiming the Good News. If you’re not happy in proclaiming the Gospel, you will be for other pleasure that you will regret later on. We must also constantly be on guard against being enslaved to power and material things because these will destroy our priesthood.”

Varquez said Pading’s ordination was timely as the Church is observing the Year of the Clergy and Consecrated Persons in 2018.

Pading grew up in Casuguran, one of the eight barangays in Homonhon, where he spent his elementary years before moving to Borongan for his minor and college seminary formation.

Although his parents are originally from Guiuan, they moved to Homonhon where his mother works as a teacher, and his father as a utility worker at a hospital, the CBCP said.

Pading celebrated his first Mass of thanksgiving in Homonhon Friday.

Homonhon Island was where Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his men first landed in the Philippines on March 16, 1521.

Some even claim that the first Mass may have been celebrated in the island.

The government, however, declared Limasawa, an island in the nearby province of Southern Leyte, as the site of the first Mass on March 31.

The celebration is part of the local Church’s nine-year “spiritual journey” that started in 2013 towards the 500th Jubilee of Christianization of the Philippines with a catechetical theme for each year. (With Leslie Ann G. Aquino)