Post-Jesuit Years
Augustinians in Leyte
UNFORTUNATELY for those times, there were simply not enough Agustinians to adequately replace the Jesuits. For a time, only three priests took care of the pueblos in the east and the south.
A depressed Fr. Agustin Maria de Castro complained to his superiors that they were "in some sort of limbo, with very scarce news of the outside world; there are no newspapers (gazetas), no magazines (mercurios)...there are no doctors, no surgeons, no boticas... The Indios lived ordinarily in the woods, mountains and forests, three or four leagues from the church (12 to 16 miles); and they come to church only on Sundays to hear mass and cockfights; the roads are bad, the sun awfully hot, torrents of rain....dangerous rivers, horses few and bad."
The Jesuits' sudden departure had doubtless aroused the natives' suspicion, forcing many of them to pack up their meager belongings and leave the pueblos for the familiar forests nearby.
Moreover, the babaylans, a powerful religious clique before the Jesuit missionaries came, had in the meantime spread the word that the new Agustinian friars were royal agents who procured babies to fatten tigers of the King of Spain. So great was the horror that the white habits caused that the sight of their cowls was their signal of an evacuation to the mountains.
Now the Agustinians were going to solve the problems by themselves only. There was no one else to turn to, no civilian or religious authority to help them. Again, an exasperated Fr. Agustin Maria de Castro wrote: "When I came to Manila from Leyte, I told all of these to the Governor, to the Archbishop and to the Provincial and to many others. The first day they heard them, they felt great sympathy and offered a thousand things; the second day, they were already cold; the third day they had forgotten all about it - and so things remained as they were."
On October 1, 1770, Fr. Joseph Victoria, the Agustinian Provincial, wrote the King that he sent religious priests who understood the dialect along with others who had just finished their Theological studies; and that he himself went over to see how they administered their duties.
Subsequently, he ordered them to put up schools for boys and girls as they did in the other towns that the Agustinians administered.
Records tell us that schools were built in Abuyog, Alangalang, Barugo, Baybay, Burauen, Dagami, Dulag, Hilongos, Jaro, Kabalian, Maasin, Ormoc, Palo, Sogod, Tacloban and Tanauan between 1768 and 1804. These flourished in the town centers as well as in important barrios.
By the 19th century, the educational thrust continued, with young girls enjoying similar priveleges in education with the boys. Official interest in education mounted as decrees were issued requiring children living within an hour's walk from the schools to go to school.
Besides education, the Agustinians concerned themselves with the local economy. As the Agustinian Provincial Fr. Joseph Victoria observed in his visit to Leyte:
"The land is little cultivated; there are no roads - the province has become one vast forest; there is not one pueblo organized; and nearly all the inhabitants live in the mountains without any work in which they could usefully occupy themselves; there are no animals for plowing or for transport...when they plant for their food, they use their hands..."
With his prodding, the Agustinians opened new roads and procured animals to plow the land, taking them from other provinces, and introduced the plow. This with the consent of the alcalde mayor Don Jose Campos.
But he told the king that he was afraid about the continuing attacks of the Moros from Mindanao, which also made the natives live in constant fear. There were few small fortresses and arms, but these could not guard more than the schools and the few inhabitants who had their houses around them.
How they came to solve these problems, we know very little. There is also a dearth of information about the Agustinians' evangelization work in the islands. But we know for a fact that they built many of the stone churches still standing today in several towns here in Leyte. These by themselves are clear testimonies of the heroic efforts exerted by the fathers in establishing strong foundations of the Catholic faith among the natives during the period.
Of the 41 parishes set up before 1900, three were attributed to the Agustinians as founders: Malitbog, San Miguel and Tacloban. The Jesuits founded 16, while the seculars 11. The Franciscans contributed three: Hinunangan, Pastrana and Tolosa.
Secular clergy
The lack of Agustinians the Leyte missions did not make the problems easier to solve. More and more, the times needed a secular and indigenous clergy for the Church to take firm roots and function normally in Leyte. But the diocese of Cebu, under whose jurisdiction fell the parishes in Leyte, could not cope with the demand. Training a native clergy would take time. It was only in the middle of the 19th century that the first diocesan priests could be assigned to towns in the western coast, with the eastern towns going to the Franciscans.
Among the first secular pioneers here were Fr. Leonardo Celis Diaz, parish priest of Matalom and Bato; Fr. Juan Seno in Ormoc; Fr. Toribio Padilla in Maasin; Fr. Tomas Logronio in Sogod; Fr. Leoncio Faelnar in Albuera.
Evidently, the secular priests took the same path as their predecessors: promoting education, building churches, preaching the Gospel, administering the sacraments, assisting their flock in their various material needs. Fr. Leonardo Celis Diaz of Matalom for instance built the stone church that is still intact today and was also the first mayor of that town. Like a true father of his flock, he ministered to both their spiritual and material needs, dying at the ripe age of 99.