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 Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Richard McCouch, SJ

Apostles to the Marianas

Celebrating Saint Pedro Calungsod and Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores takes me back in time and space to Guam and my first encounter with these 17th century notables.

I was suddenly somewhere else on my birthday, December 7th, in 1998. Walk with me that day into the Jesuit community house named Guma Pedro in Guam: welcomed into a game of bridge amongst Jesuit priests and Bishop Marty Nealon, and into a native dance by local seminarians and a JIV named Andre Javier.

Fr. Dan Mulhauser, SJ, summed up impressions to come in a few words: “Rich, you will be sitting around the table completely confused and trying to understand what is happening around you for about six months. Suddenly, understanding will catch up with experience and you’ll get it.” A prophet if I ever met one, Dan escorted me around Guam, beginning at the martyrdom site of Pedro Calungsod and Diego Luis de San Vitores, SJ.

Even before "Cancel Culture," the memory of Diego Luis de San Vitores knew the long shadow of shame that his contemporary world called fame. As is the case with so many missionaries, San Vitores is criticized for an insensitivity toward the culture of the people he evangelized, and he is even wrapped up in the blame for the Chamorro-Spanish War that followed his ministry. Celebrated as a missionary in his day, San Vitores employed his noble birth to persuade the royals of Austria and Spain to order a mission in Guam, which he had briefly visited en-route to the Philippines. A permanent Christian presence, the first Catholic church, and a re-naming of the fabled “Isle of Thieves” (Magellan’s legacy) as the Marianas (for Queen Marie Ana of Austria)* are the first fruits of San Vitores’ legacy. The Chief who greeted him – Kepuha – also donated the land on which that first church was built, an important local contribution for mission reception. Chief Kepuha and Fr. San Vitores built a bridge with gospel accord, but with that chief’s death, local relations soured.

As for the youthful Pedro Calungsod, we know little of him before his accompaniment and, ultimately, his heroic defense of San Vitores. Actually “known” is Pedro’s birth in one of four places in the Philippine Islands claiming him, and that around the age of 14, having been trained at a Jesuit boarding school, and having mastered catechesis and the Spanish language, Calungsod joined San Vitores as a lay catechist, and together these stalwarts embarked on the royal mission to the Chamorro people of Guam. Jesuits and lay catechists in their lifestyle simulated the simple life of the natives: preaching the news of Jesus Christ while walking barefoot, eating frugal meals, using local fibers in garb. Within half a year 13,000 persons received baptism.**

The story of the martyrdom of San Vitores and Calungsod, as told to me by Fr. Dan onsite, is that initially the native Chamorros accepted San Vitores and other missionaries and catechists, as well as the baptism signifying conversion. Enthusiasm for social status and gifts flowed in acceptance, but the idea of equality before God bumped into the Chamorro system of castes and veneration of ancestors. Moreover, a Chinese criminal exile from Manila named Choco began spreading rumors that baptismal water (“it’s poison!”) led to the death of several sickly children, and these rumors found credence among the local medicine men and younger aspirant leaders.

Once, San Vitores and Calungsod heard of the birth of a baby girl and visited with baptism in mind. Her Christian mother, present, assented; her infuriated father, a chief named Mata'pang, not present, sought the missionaries’ deaths. Calamity followed. Mata’pang hurled spears, which Pedro dodged, but who would not desert San Vitores. Protecting the priest cost the catechist his life when a spear to the chest, followed by a head-bashing, left Pedro helpless. San Vitores is said to have piously absolved his protector in the moments before he too was killed. Both corpses were stripped, weighted with stones, and dropped from a proa – an outrigger sailboat – into the waters offshore in Tumon Bay – (a fabled location of other legends which I visited often).

Although San Vitores’ cause for beatification emanated within a month of his martyrdom, it wasn’t until the end of World War II and the reestablishment of the Catholic Church on Guam that prompted the local cause to be promoted by the sole priest to survive the Japanese occupation, Monsignor Oscar Calvo, himself a Chamorro patriot. San Vitores’ intercultural missteps were shaded from scrutiny as the light of that post-war generation sought to rebuild traditional Catholic community in Guam. Another generation’s point of view shadowed San Vitores’ reputation, his zeal seen as misdirected.

As for Pedro Calungsod, on the eve of the Great Jubilee of 2000 Pope John Paul II desired to include young Asian laypersons as exemplars of Christian living. Pedro’s causa, having taken 20 years since its inception, shone brightly and had just been completed. I remember well local Filipinos rejoicing during that Jubilee year. Then, following the miraculous revival of a woman after two hours who died from a heart attack, attested by a local physician who invoked and claimed Pedro’s intercession, the causa gained impetus, and he was canonized in 2012. Pedro’s “pilgrim image,” created from 17th century contemporary descriptions of young men from Pedro’s birthplace and also modeled on a popular Filipino basketball player, grew further idealized in television and cinema portrayals within this recent time frame. Proving to be a very popular saint, this layman celebrated his life and faith in catechesis and in crisis, Christ-like.

In these days, the memory of those Chamorro vilified, especially Mata’pang, continues to be cleansed. Incidentally, the name Mata’pang means “to be made pure by cleansing,” in Chamorro.

At this end of history, one may be charmed by the story of Pedro Calungsod and alarmed by the quest of San Vitores. I am. Having worked for seven years with and among the people now in these islands, dedication to their welfare comes easily, and my connections there lead me to find island connections even here in my current mission in West Virginia.

We Jesuits have learned a lot from the lapsed allure of San Vitores’ way of proceeding as well: In St. Paul’s words, “Now I shall show you a better way.” Love for God cannot contradict love of neighbor. Our own zeal, chastened by this age in how we communicate by Zoom, forces us to reconsider how and whom we address, and why. Zoom hastens the immediacy of being both suddenly somewhere else and yet still be rooted in place. The challenge of being present to one another in good faith remains the same: remember the gospel, put aside the lapsed allure of lore from days long since.

Blessed Diego de San Vitores and Saint Pedro Calungsod, pray for us!

Fr. Richard McCouch, SJ, is the Director of the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling University.