Pilgrims' City

Presidential Executive Order #33 and Naga City Resolution No. 2010-280 had declared the city on which INA's image is enshrined as a "pilgrimage capital/city." The EO was issued on September 10 or the day of the Traslacion while the city resolution-despite its terseness and otioseness in comparison with the President's declaration-was issued three days later.

These official government acts, one from the national and the other from the local, were unexpected but well-received developments during the 300^th year celebration of the devotion to INA. They formally established Naga City as a pilgrimage site in which INA's devotees from all over would be welcomed. The government's EO and city resolution instituted Naga as "pilgrims' city."

WE thus laud that the President directed that "[T]he programs and activities instituted during the Peñafrancia Festival must be conducted in an atmosphere of peace and order that must be assisted and maintained by the government, and that the solemnity and sensitivity of the nature and character of the festivities must be preserved." For this, in fact, had been the plea of the local church and many sectors of the community to the Naga City government in recent years: that of preserving the solemnity of INA's fiesta while at the same time, securing the numerous pilgrims from both here and abroad who call themselves devotees of Our Lady of Peñafrancia.

This newspaper had earlier expressed its opposition to the commercialization and prostitution of INA's feast through the staging of street parties and public drinking sprees which exploited the fiesta celebration. Malacañang's further prescription in the EO is thus certainly most welcome. It stated "the government shall ensure that the conduct of the observances essential to the feast, which include but are not limited to the Traslacion, the Fluvial and Dawn Processions and other cultural and historical remembrance activities, shall be respected, and that commercial exploitation during the pilgrimage period such as street parties that may become rambunctious, drinking sprees in plazas, street vending that obstruct passages towards the pilgrimage sites, and other similar activities, shall be discouraged."

The institution of Naga City as a "city of pilgrimage" has long been hoped for our community, toward which end the Council of the Laity of the Archdiocese of Caceres had sought to petition then Naga City Mayor Jesse Robredo to consider enacting an ordinance which would declare the city precisely as a pilgrimage city. Alas, Robredo and his City Legal Officer, Angel Ojastro, hid behind the excuse that such an ordinance might violate the Constitutional provision on the separation of the Church and State.

Robredo and Ojastro believed that an ordinance which established Naga City as a "pilgrims' city" in which devotees would be provided the necessary basic services and facilities when they make their pilgrimage here; and that which protected and preserved the solemnity of the Peñafrancia Fiesta celebration; might be contrary to the Philippine Constitution and thus effectively rejected the idea.

Fortunately for us, the President of the Philippines and his team of legal advisers, and the new Naga City Mayor John Bongat and the City Council, thought otherwise.