2018: Year of the Clergy and the Religious

With more than 80 million Catholics, the Philippines is home to the third largest Catholic population in the world.

For everybody’s information, we are now on the 6th year of the nine-year journey to year 2021. What do we mean by this? Last July 2012, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) announced the “nine-year journey for the New Evangelization.” This is to prepare the community and the faithful for the March 16, 2021, 5th centenary or 500 years of the coming of Christianity in the Philippines.

This year, 2018, CBCP declared the Year of the Clergy and the Religious from December 03, 2017 to November 25, 2018. The different themes for each year: Year of Integral Faith Formation (2013); Year of the Laity (2014); Year of the Poor (2015); Year of the Eucharist and the Family (2016); Year of the Parish as a Communion of Communities (2017); Year of the Clergy and Religious (2018); Year of the Youth (2019); Year of Ecumenism and Inter-Religious Dialogue (2020); and Year of Missio ad gentes [mission to the nations] (2021).

A 80-million stronghold Catholics, the Philippines is considered as the third-largest Catholic population in the world, where Catholic practice is fervent and wide-ranging. The Philippines comprise more than 2,000 inhabited islands, and large islands often have multiple provincial and local cultures. Historically speaking, Filipino Catholicism is shaped by local indigenous practices, and by the Spaniards who conquered it in the 16th century and ruled it until the early 20th century.

QUICK LOOK AT CATHOLIC DEMOGRAPHICS IN THE PHILIPPINES

These statistics are derived from the Vatican’s official publication, Statistical Yearbook of the Church, 2015. Vatican City: Librera Editrice Vaticana, 2017. The numbers may differ from data reported by other sources on this site.

Filipinos stand out for their devotional fervor. Filipino Catholic practice is unusually material and physical built especially on devotions to Virgin Mary, the suffering Christ, and the Santo Niño (Holy Child), and on powerful celebratory and penitential rituals practiced and experienced in a wide variety of Filipino vernacular forms. Feasts like the Black Nazarene, which draws millions to the streets of Manila in January, the Simbang Gabi novena that precedes Christmas, and the month-long Flores de Mayo offering to Mary illustrate distinctively Filipino forms of devotion.

To date, the first Mass in the Philippines was celebrated in Limasawa  on Easter Sunday, March 31, 1521. History stated that it was also then when Rajah Humabon and his wife Hara Amihan were baptized and given the Christian name Carlos and Juana, respectively. Accordingly, that Ferdinand Magellan gifted these two first Catholics in the country with the image of Santo Niño de Cebu.

“We are truly looking forward with gratitude and joy on upcoming March 16, 2021, the fifth centenary of the coming of Christianity to our beloved land, and indeed a year of great jubilee for the Church in the Philippines.” Amen.