> Fr. Jorge
Barlin
ON June 29, 2006, Naga City will be the center of a national event
of great historical importance. This early, the Archdiocese of
Caceres led by Archbishop Leonardo Z. Legaspi, is quietly but
intently laying out preparations for the 100th year of the
Episcopal consecration of Most Rev. Jorge Barlin y Imperial,
dubbed by eminent Bicol historian Domingo Abella as the “First
Filipino Bishop of All Times.”
Monsignor Barlin’s first Episcopal consecration was held in Manila
one hundred years ago. The historic occasion showed to the world
how mistaken the former Spanish regime was in discrediting the
capacity of native priests who were denied to be attached with
such honor during the 300 years of Catholicism in the Philippines
under imperial Spain. Before Fr. Barlin’s consecration, Abella
noted in his Bikol Annals that the Philippine hierarchy was
composed entirely of Spanish friars.
Born Jorge Alfonso on April 24, 1850 to spouses Mateo Alfonso and
Francisca Imperial in Baao, Camarines Sur, the young Barlin spent
four years of philosophical studies at the Seminario Conciliar de
Nueva Caceres (now Holy Rosary Seminary in Naga City) and finished
his priesthood studies in the same seminary. He was ordained to
the priesthood in 1874 during the episcopate of the famous
Dominican Bishop of Spanish Nueva Caceres, Fr. Francisco Gainza.
The good bishop, known for building the most important landmarks
in Nueva Caceres that still survive up to this day, saw in Barlin
the gifts of talent, mature judgment and executive ability. Young
Barlin was immediately appointed Capella de Solio and Majordomo of
the Naga Cathedral, holding to this position until the great
bishop died with Barlin, his confidant and understudy, at his
death side.
In the history of the Catholic Church in the Philippines before
the Americans came, not one Filipino rose to the dignity of the
episcopate. In the long centuries of Christianization in the
Philippines, the Iberian colonizers and church hierarchy believed
that a Filipino native clergyman was not worthy or dignified
enough to become a bishop. As one writer said: “Yet it was
understandable, although deplorable, that during the Spanish
colonial era the episcopal dignity should be restricted to
Spaniards. Given the external structure of the hierarchy where the
bishops lived and were thought of as feudal lords, it would have
been expecting too much of human nature to ask the (Spanish)
Captain General or the Alcalde Mayor to genuflect before and kiss
the ring of a bishop who belonged to what he considered an
inferior race.”
Thus, according to the late historian Jose Calleja Reyes, when the
Philippine revolution against Spain was smothered by the
subsequent American occupation of the islands, the hierarchical
structure of the church in the Philippines entered into a vacuum
with the yielding of the Spanish bishops of their dioceses to the
new order or the abandonment of their Episcopal sees.
In the see of Nueva Caceres (today’s Naga), at the height of the
revolution, the bishopric was already without a bishop, its last
Spanish bishop having left for Spain in June 1898. Against this
backdrop, the American civil government and the Vatican started to
fill the vacant sees of Manila, Cebu, Nueva Segovia and Jaro with
American bishop-elects — with the exception of the see of Nueva
Caceres to which the long sought honor of Episcopal conferment on
a native Filipino clergyman was soon fulfilled with the
appointment of Jorge Barlin, a native Bicol priest, as its
Bishop-elect.
As the only Filipino bishop at that time, Msgr. Barlin was given
the honor to deliver the invocation at the inaugural session of
the Philippine Assembly in October 16, 1907. The significance of
the historic occasion is chronicled in a journal reprinted by the
Philippine Press Bureau in Washington, D.C.”, to wit:
“The Bicols, who for decades have pointed with pride their high
percentage of literary … are a deep-thinking serious-minded
people; they have their Jorge Barlin, the first Filipino bishop
under the American regime. It was Father Barlin who made the
invocation at the opening of the first Philippine Assembly in 1907
– a little incident in world history the full significance of
which one hardly grasps. In a setting of Oriental fanaticism,
where life is held as naught, where his liberty, his home, his
family are his only, so long as they are not wanted by another
more powerful than he, there had come into existence an island
people with Christian ideals, in whose land our own America had
laid the foundation of democracy. Here, in 1907, the Bicol bishop,
Father Jorge Barlin, gave the opening invocation of the first
Oriental assembly of the people, by the people and for the
people.”
Death came to Bishop Barlin on September 4, 1909, in Rome. He was
interred in that holy city. Several attempts to bring his remains
to the Philippines in later years proved futile.
The bishop belonged to a prominent Baao clan: the Imperials from
whose family tree came the Arroyos (Sen. Joker being one of them),
the Bernases (brothers Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J. and Atty. Justino
Bernas), and the Guevarras (of the once famous DMG-Volkswagen/Phils.).
A question is asked why the good monsignor was surnamed Barlin.
