‘Mother church of all churches’ reopens
After two years of retrofitting, restoration and renovation, the Manila Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, or Manila Cathedral for short, reopened on April 9 with a eucharistic celebration presided over by Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila.
Cathedral and faithful. President Aquino and his sisters Ballsy, Viel and Kris, Senate President Franklin and Mrs. Mila Drilon, Manila Mayor Joseph and Sen. Loi Estrada, plus 1,800 other faithful from the 92 parishes and different lay organizations of the archdiocese graced the occasion. Most of them came from poor and underprivileged communities. Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno sent her regrets as she was presiding over the Supreme Court’s summer session in Baguio.
The word “church” in Catholic tradition has two meanings. First, it refers to the material or concrete structure; and second, to the community of the faithful, the churchgoers. The church building exists to serve the churchgoers who are called by God to love Him and one another in worship, spirit and truth.
A cathedral is the ecclesia caput et mater omnium ecclesiarum or the “head and mother church of all churches” in the archdiocese. It is the home of the entire archdiocese. According to Vatican II, the cathedral-church is the place where Christians, united to their archbishop, live and mature in faith. Thus, believers enter the cathedral for communal devotion of the sacred mysteries and, especially, for the celebration of the Eucharist.
Inside the cathedral is the cathedra or chair of the archbishop. It is the symbol of apostolic succession in the church. The cathedra or apostolic chair “qualifies” or distinguishes a cathedral from a parish church or chapel.
Retrofitting and restoration. Founded and originally constructed in 1571, the Manila Cathedral was damaged eight times by fire, earthquake, nature and World War II. It has been rebuilt, reconstructed and/or restored eight times also.
During the last two years, the church’s structure was strengthened by removing the heavy carrara pedestals and marble claddings on all the columns and retrofitting them with carbon fiber wraps, up to 1.5 meters below ground level. Then, the marble claddings were restored to their original condition without breakage.
The marble flooring had to be lifted piece by piece to construct a huge drainage system to prevent rainwater from seeping in and weakening the foundations. Electrical wiring and new plumbing were installed and then the marble flooring was restored to its original position, also without any breakage.
The decorative capitals and arches near the ceiling were precast and demolished to fiber-wrap the columns to the top and then replaced with the precast ones to look like the originals, including their liturgical symbols. Structural steel was installed to strengthen the beams of the roof.
New state-of-the-art lighting inside and outside the church, audio-visual systems, and security CCTVs were also carefully planned and installed. Wall cracks were injected with over 120 gallons of epoxy.
Carbon fiber wraps were retrofitted on the weakened columns of the belfry tower. The old heavy bells were earlier brought down and placed at the cathedral’s garden side.
Not fully complete. The retrofitting and architectural restorations have been finished with the help of our kind donors led by Ramon S. Ang of San Miguel Corp., George S. K. Ty of Metrobank, Justa Lee and Antonio Oppen, our contractor
DM Consunji, and our project manager SP Castro. However, the Cathedral’s renovations and systems enhancements are not fully complete yet.
The 13-bell carillon, which was donated a few years ago by Bert and Sylvia Lina, will be replaced in a few months—also by Bert and Sylvia—with the latest, state-of-the-art 23-bell carillon from the Netherlands. Furthermore, our antiquated air-conditioning system will be changed as soon as we find a generous donor.
The Metropolitan Manila Cathedral-Basilica Foundation raises the funds for and oversees the retrofitting, restoration and renovation. Its officers are Cardinal Tagle, chair; former Ambassador Tita de Villa, vice-chair; Marixi Prieto, treasurer; Msgr. Nestor Cerbo, executive director; Erlito Fider, corporate secretary; and yours truly, president.
Its board of trustees is composed of Bishop Bernardino Cortez, Fr. Domingo Asuncion, Fr. Alberto Flores, Cecille Alvarez, Mary Ann Chan,
Susana Chung, Danny Dolor, Cecille Oppen and Letty Syquia.
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Cheers to Judith Duavit Vasquez, a director of GMA Network and the first female Asian trustee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), for hosting the 20th anniversary of the Internet at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Pasig City.
Over 100 cyber professionals “conversed” on the present and future of the Internet. Among them were legislators (Rep. Susan Yap, a coauthor of the Cybercrime Prevention Law), executive officials on cyber (Assistant Justice Secretary Guillermo Sy, Supt. Gilberto Sosa), Icann officers (Christopher Mondini, Kuek Yu-Chang, Jia-Rong Low), cyber experts (Drexx Laggui, PLDT’s Jovy Hernandez, ABS-CBN’s Donald Lim) and plain citizens like me.
To reach another person on the Internet, one must type an address on a computer—a name or a number. That address must be unique so computers know where to find it. Icann coordinates these unique identifiers in the world. Without this coordination, one global Internet is not possible.
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