austraLasia #2751
(Note: the medico said "3 weeks - no computer, please!" Right
now at 6.20 pm Jerusalem time, it is 3 weeks to the very hour. I have
been obedient. Now we can resume transmission! But you may need
to help kick-start things again with some news items from around the
region; haven't been looking at the computer screen, or trawling sites,
remember!)
Don Bosco blackmailed
LEGAZPI CITY: 20 November 2010 -- Situated in the last
barrio of the city famous for its perfectly coned Mayon Volcano, the
Don Bosco Agro-Mechanical Technology Center in Banquerohan, Legazpi
City, Philippines North Province celebrated a Partners’ Day on 5
November 2010. Attended by eighty representatives of the training
centre’s individual and corporate benefactors, as well as by government
agencies and non-government organizations supporting its programs, the
affair recognized the contributions of the benefactors and highlighted
the fruits of the ten years of presence of Don Bosco in this vast
agricultural region called the Bicol Region.
The founder of the training center is the bishop
emeritus of Legazpi City, Bishop Jose Sorra, who was present during the
event, along with the incumbent bishop, Joel Baylon. Of interest is
Bishop Sorra’s account during the affair of how he blackmailed Don
Bosco to have the Salesians work in his diocese:
“For 45 years since 1951, all of my three bishop-predecessors in the
Diocese of Legazpi had respectively been inviting the Don Bosco Fathers
to put up a vocational high school for the out-of-school youth over
here in the diocese.
The Salesian Superiors’ usual stereotyped response, however, was:
Bishop, we don’t have the Don Bosco personnel and we don’t have the
money, either, for the land, the building, and the facilities.
In July 1996, we tried once again our luck with the Italian Don Bosco
Provincial Superior, then the Rev. Fr. Luciano Capelli, SDB, who is
currently the Salesian Bishop of Solomon Islands. Without much ado, we
offered him a deal, to wit: 1) that we give Don Bosco 12 hectares of
agricultural land for its perpetual use, and 2) that we put up a
building-complex furnished with all the needed facilities and
equipment; and, on Don Bosco’s part, to simply take over the management
and operation of the Vocation School. Finally, thank God, the deal was
done!
Meanwhile, even before the approval by his Provincial Superior, Brother
Parolin, then the (Technical) Director of the Don Bosco of Makati, and
I had already been doing some pencil-pushing behind the scene- on the
layout of the proposed building complex, the vocational curriculum, and
the number and kinds of vocational facilities and equipment. And, above
all the total cost!
Then I told Brother Parolin, you had better pray to your Patron Saint
Don John Bosco, as you had never ever prayed before. Meanwhile, for
almost three years then from 1996 to 1999, I was crisscrossing Europe
by plane and train, as a beggar looking around for millions of euros
for Don Bosco Legazpi.
One day in the course of my trip, I felt almost exhausted and went to
the big Don Bosco School and Community in Belgium– just to rest. After
my Mass at the Don Bosco chapel, I prayed and talked straight and
bluntly to the Saint, saying: “John, I’m now very tired looking for
money for you and your poor boys back home. You had better help me out,
or I go home to tell your boys that you seem not to care about them
anymore…”
And, believe me, the poor Saint apparently got blackmailed. At
breakfast table, no less than the Don Bosco Community’s treasurer
suggested that I go to Germany with a note from him to the Director of
Misereor, together with our prepared staggering total project cost.
In the afternoon of the same day, I was with the Misereor Director in
Aachen, Germany. He asked me to come back the following day. Then,
right then and there, he smilingly told me, “Bishop, you’re quite
lucky, your project proposal with its total cost has been approved by
our Misereor Council.”
In January of the year 2000, we started the work on the building
complex. And in 10 months time, the imposing Don Bosco building complex
with its Community’s rectory was done. Then, finally, the Don
Bosco Agro-mechanical Centre of the Diocese of Legazpiwas all
set for operation. His Eminence, Jose T. Cardinal Sanchez, the Prefect
of the Congregation of the Clergy in Rome, in the presence of the
Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines and some 20 Bishops, dozens of
priests, religious, and the lay-faithful, blessed the building complex
on the 29th of June, the Golden Foundation Anniversary of the Diocese
of Legazpi!” _________________ AustraLasia is an
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Rome.
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