WHILE Hawaii prepares to honor its second Catholic saint, Mother Marianne Cope, a small and devoted group of Filipinos from California, Hawaii and Guam is working hard to teach the lessons of a nearly forgotten martyr who will join Cope in October as they become the church’s newest saints.
Until April, Gene Lumantas knew nothing about Blessed Pedro Calungsod, a young man killed on Guam in 1672 while assisting with a baptism. His body was dragged out to sea, never to be found.
But now Lumantas tells her catechism students at St. John Apostle & Evangelist Church in Mililani that even Catholics who aren’t priests or nuns can achieve sainthood by doing good things on Earth.
"Do you know that even an ordinary person can be a saint?" Lumantas asks her 8- and 9-year-old students. "Just look at the story of Blessed Pedro."
On Oct. 21, Calungsod will join Cope and five others who will become Catholic saints at the Vatican, following the ascension of St. Damien of Molokai in 2009.
Lumantas already was planning to make the pilgrimage to Rome to witness Cope’s canonization, along with Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva and Hansen’s disease patients from the remote Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai. Cope worked briefly alongside Damien and took over ministering to the sick when the priest died in 1889.
But now Lumantas is planning to honor both Cope and Calungsod during her trip to the Vatican.
"I’m a catechist and he’s a catechist," Lumantas said. "I was so struck that just an ordinary person could be a saint."
There are no images of Calungsod and little is known about when or why he journeyed from Cebu in the Philippines to Guam — or even how old he was when he and Father Diego Luis de San Vitores were killed in Tumon.
Unlike his young charge, San Vitores is known on Guam and elsewhere, and a main thoroughfare on the island bears the priest’s name, as do a church and other buildings.
So the Congress of Visayan Organizations built a float out of a pickup truck in Calungsod’s honor for the May 5 Filipino Fiesta in Waikiki and handed out fliers that outlined the few details of his life.
"Outside of the Philippines he’s not that well-known. So we wanted to let more people know who he is," said Jun Colmenares, director of the Congress of Visayan Organizations.
By some estimates, Calungsod was a teenage lay member of the church, a "catechist" who traveled with Spanish Jesuit missionaries to convert native Chamorros on Guam.
On April 2, 1672, the day before Passion Sunday, Calungsod and San Vitores had finished baptizing the daughter of a chief when they were attacked and killed by the baby’s father, Matapang, and another villager who resented the missionaries, according to a website — www.pedrocalungsod.net — maintained by the Rev. Jose Arong of Oakland, Calif. Calungsod is believed to have died first, perhaps defending the priest.
Arong knew nothing about Calungsod until he heard his story in Cebu three years ago. Since then, he’s been organizing efforts to teach modern-day Catholics the lessons of Calungsod’s martyrdom.
"It’s too bad that a man died for our faith and we Filipinos don’t even know about him," Arong said.
Part of the appeal of Calungsod’s journey from 17th-century catechist to 21st-century saint lies "in the fact that he was an unknown," Arong said. "He was an underdog. And I’ve made it a personal crusade to make him known to people."
Although Guam, a U.S. territory nearly 4,000 miles west of Hawaii, is largely Catholic, many there have been reluctant to celebrate an obscure outsider who was killed by locals, said Deacon Kin Borja of St. Elizabeth Church in Aiea, who is of Filipino and Chamorro ancestry and grew up on Guam. In fact, Matapang is now seen by many Chamorros as a hero for resisting colonial rule.
"We never heard the name of the young martyr," Borja said. "I did not even know his name until very recently because of complete shame over his death and the legend of what my ancestors did."
The deaths of the two missionaries were so shrouded in mystery, Borja said, that he and other children on Guam were told the waters around Tumon turned red every year because of the dead men’s blood.
Calungsod "was never mentioned by name but we were told his blood was coming back to haunt us," Borja said. "We learned later that the red algae made the water red, which was a relief because we thought we were doomed. It’s due time that we honor this man. It’s about time."
The late Pope John Paul II referred to Calungsod by name on several occasions, including at a 2002 youth rally in Toronto in which he urged young people to emulate the "heroic virtues" of the church’s young martyrs. On the occasion of Calungsod’s beatification in 2000, the pope said "young people today can draw encouragement and strength from the example of Pedro, whose love of Jesus inspired him to devote his teenage years to teaching the faith as a lay catechist."
"Leaving family and friends behind, Pedro willingly accepted the challenge put to him by Father Diego de San Vitores … and undertook the demanding work asked of him and bravely faced the many obstacles and difficulties he met. In the face of imminent danger, Pedro would not forsake Father Diego, but as a ‘good soldier of Christ’ preferred to die at the missionary’s side."
CALUNGSOD is said to intercede for the young, in particular those of his native Philippines. On Dec. 19, a miracle attributed to Calungsod’s intervention was verified by the church. According to Philippine news accounts, the case involves a comatose woman in a Cebu hospital in 2003 who was declared brain-dead but experienced a sudden recovery after her doctor prayed to the martyr.
Calungsod will be the second Filipino to be canonized by the Catholic Church. In 1987, sainthood was bestowed on Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila, a parish scribe and former altar boy martyred in Japan in 1637.
So far, there are no scheduled events to honor Calungsod on Guam — but that’s certain to change as the date of his October canonization approaches, said Monsignor Brigido Arroyo, communications director for the archdiocese of Agana.
"It’s still pretty low-key here," Arroyo said. "We just do not know that much about him."
