ROXAS City, Capiz – True to the spirit of the theme “gifted to give” as the Philippine Church celebrates 500 years since Christianity arrived in the Philippines, the country’s newest Cardinal sent two priests from his Archdiocese to minister as missionaries abroad.
A solemn commissioning ceremony for the two missionary priests in time for the opening the “Year of Missio Ad Gentes” was held here Jan 10 on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord at the Immaculate Conception Metropolitan Cathedral within a Eucharistic celebration presided by Capiz Archbishop Jose F. Cardinal Advincula Jr.
Rev. Fr. Marc Raymund Besana and Rev. Fr. Taz Idyl Lasola will be both sent to the Diocese of Nottingham in England, and was given by the Cardinal “the mandate of the Lord to proclaim the Gospel.”
Both Fr. Besana and Fr. Lasola are experienced missionary priests in Capiz, having been assigned in communities that can be considered as those that belong in the “peripheries.”
Mission Stations are Church communities in either or both poor and/or distant locations – projects initiated by Cardinal Advincula, who is now popularly acclaimed as a “Cardinal from the peripheries,” as Archbishop of Capiz and previously as Bishop of San Carlos in Negros during the 2000s.
The Latin term “missio ad gentes” literally means “sent to the nations.”
Giving the homily in the said mass was Rev. Fr. Ignacio Bercades, SdP, the local superior of the Missionary Servants of the Poor in Capiz, who emphasized the Church’s missionary identity.
“Missionary work is no longer an optional activity of the Church,” Fr. Bercades, himself a religious missionary, said, adding that missions are “the expression of the very being of the Church and is not peripheral to its life.”
“Mission is not what we do, mission is who we are,” he added.
