Tag: Vol. LXXIX

A LITTLE over a month before resigning as head of the Filipino Dominicans over supposed violations of Church law in the UST Hospital spinoff, Fr. Edmund Nantes, O.P., called upon his fellow prior provincials to be patient on their wayward brothers as well as themselves.

In his homily during the Order of Preachers’ General Chapter in Bogota, Colombia last July 28, Fr. Nantes described how the Dominican community is a mixed lot— composed of good and bad brothers symbolically represented as “wheat” and the “weeds” in the bible parable.

He reminded his fellow Chapter friars that there are many “positive concerns” provincials need to address and that they must not spend “all their energies dealing with problematic brothers and filing canonical cases here and there.”

SIX THOMASIAN martyrs were declared “Blessed” in the biggest beatification in history presided by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, at St. Peter’s Square in Rome last October 28.

The 498 beatified martyrs, who died in the hands of an anticlerical movement in Spain in the early 1930s, were composed of two bishops, 24 diocesan priests, 462 religious, one deacon, one sub-deacon (a position which does not exist today), one seminarian, and seven lay people.

According to Fr. Pedro Tejero, O.P., spiritual director of the UST Central Seminary, the beatification rites should serve as sort of a stimulus for the renewal of Christian life and the promotion of the spirit of reconciliation.

WHILE still awaiting the results of a thorough review of plans to expand and commercialize the UST Hospital, the University is bent on seeking better terms from a group of banks supposed to finance the expansion, following a directive from the Dominican headquarters in Rome for the hospital to keep its educational character.

Acting Rector Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P. said the University wants to renegotiate the P3-billion loan from a consortium of banks signed last April to reduce the cost of the hospital redevelopment.

A committee has been studying the redevelopment plan and had submitted a preliminary report last October 8. The committee was due to submit another report last October 15, which will be fine-tuned before the results are disseminated, Father De la Rosa said in an interview.

ALL’S for the best, said UST’s top three officials whose resignations had been accepted by the Master of the Dominican Order due to Rome’s disagreement with their redevelopment plan for the UST Hospital.

“I am leaving excitedly for Letran Calamba,” said resigned UST rector Fr. Ernesto Arceo, O.P., who would now be a resident faculty of the Philippine Dominican Province’s school in Laguna.

Father Arceo announced his post-UST plans during a farewell dinner tendered for the three priests by Acting Rector Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa at the UST Central Seminary gymnasium last October 3.

The dinner was an opportunity for Father Arceo and the two other top UST officials — resigned Philippine Dominican Province prior provincial Fr. Edmund Nantes, O.P. and resigned vice-rector Fr. Juan Ponce, O.P. — to formally bid goodbye to the UST community as well as come clean on the issues that led to their resignations.

THOMASIANS will greet not only a new year in January 2008 but also likely, a new, yet old, rector.

The acting rector, Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P., may have to stay on the job for at least four more years after being chosen by fellow Dominicans and University deans to serve a full term as rector.

Father De la Rosa, appointed acting UST rector by the Dominican master general last September to spearhead the review of the controversial spinoff and expansion of UST Hospital, won successive ballots conducted among UST Dominicans and members of the Academic Senate in accordance with the University’s General Statutes.

THE IRONY of the Philippines being a predominantly Christian country while being named as the most corrupt Asian country in the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy survey is not lost on Catholic educational institutions like UST.

Father Rector Ernesto Arceo, O.P. has created a Permanent Committee for the Advocacy of Honesty and Justice that will cultivate the values of truth and honesty so as to make Thomasians “agents of moral change” in the wider world outside.