The fruit of 500 years?

IT was a special moment when we marked last year the 500th anniversary of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, the start of Spanish colonization of our islands, and the arrival of Christianity in the Philippines. Each of these anniversaries is significant in our development and growth as a nation, but I would choose the third as the most important.

Because of it, we are today a predominantly Catholic Christian nation. There is everything to be said for that. It gives so much meaning to Magellan’s expedition, and to Spain’s colonial intervention in our culture. Spain itself may no longer be as Catholic as before, but what they have lost we have gained. We are today a stronger Catholic nation.

Upon his 12,600-mile crossing of the Pacific, Magellan became the world’s greatest explorer of all time. Far greater than Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Vasco da Gama, Sebastian Cabot, Giovanni Caboto, Bartolomeu Dias, and others. This claim is undisputed.

Charles Avila, author of The Untold Magellan Story (Barnes & Noble), which takes the form of a letter written by Magellan himself, rather than about him, and addressed to “the peoples of the Oceans, the Islands, the Archipelagos and the Continents,” reiterates this claim.

He says Magellan’s expedition, the Armada de Maluco, “is unquestionably the greatest human achievement on the sea. Only after 450 years came Apollo 11, which gave us a whole Earth view from many angles.”

However, William Manchester, the American historian, calls Enrique, the Visayan valet whom Magellan acquired in Malacca in 1511 and traveled with to India, Africa, Portugal, Spain and finally to Cebu, where the Portuguese captain-general died in the hands of Lapulapu — as “the first circumnavigator of the world.”

Magellan’s voyage enabled cartographers to draw the first complete map of the known world; and Spain, to try and transplant its colonial political structure into the archipelago. Thus, the primitive islands which the Spanish explorer Ruy de Villalobos called Las Islas Filipinas in honor of King Philip 2nd of Spain, entered world history. Not everyone saw it then, but this linking of Europe to Asia marked the first globalization.

At the “Magellan Appreciation Night” last night in one of Metro Manila’s posh hotels, Charlie Avila pointed out that although Magellan was neither a priest nor cleric nor member of any religious order but merely an ordinary layman, it was he, “through his spontaneous and impassioned sermon, who brought Christianity to our shores.” It was also Magellan, he said, who gave Lapulapu “the role and the chance to become a hero hundreds of years later to a nation that Magellan was just conceiving but had not yet been born.”

Indeed, the Christianization of the islands was Magellan’s greatest achievement. It lifted the veil of ignorance from people of animist and other primitive beliefs, and allowed the embryonic local Church to worship with the universal Catholic Church all at once.

In 500 years, the Philippines (with 85,470,000 Catholics) has become the world’s third most populous Catholic country, after Brazil with 123,360,000 Catholics, Mexico with 100,000,000, and before the US with 69,300,000, Italy with 50,474,000, and Spain with 30,720,000.

Its land surface is covered with churches, seminaries, religious houses, hospitals, hospices, orphanages and other facilities run by parishes, dioceses, religious orders and missionaries, while Filipino priests and religious sisters are all over the world serving the Church where they are most needed — in places of hunger, disease, danger, conflict and ungodly belief.

At the Vatican, Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio “Chito” Gokim Tagle, whom some Vatican observers and analysts fondly refer to as the “Asian Francis,” is serving as proprefect for the Section of Evangelization of the Dicastery since June 5, 2022, and as president of the Interdicasterial Commission for Consecrated Religious since Dec. 8, 2019. A great gift to the Church.

Everywhere else, ordinary Filipinos are working in defense of human life, the family and marriage. I have always considered these as existential and civilizational issues, and in my two consecutive terms in the Senate, I tried consistently to speak to these. Whether in our own plenary hall or in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum, the Europe-Asia dialogue or those organized by foreign governments, the Vatican, the UN, or the ecumenical World Congress of Families — whether it be in Prague, Geneva, New York, Berlin, Brussels, Bangkok, Amman, Doha, Seoul, Cairo, Lima, Amsterdam, Madrid, Salt Lake, Vancouver, Ottawa, Budapest, or Moscow, I tried to be heard.

In the US, where President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have their own political definition of “Catholic,” the Supreme Court recently overturned its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, using the pen of Justice Samuel Alito to declare that “there is no constitutional right to abortion.” Indeed, there is a sacred and inviolable right to life, but not to its destruction.

This was a stunning victory not just for the US pro-life movement but for all mankind. I would like to believe the victory is also ours, perhaps one of the fruits of the last 500 years?