National Museum urged to return St. Augustine pulpit panels

MANILA, Philippines — Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma yesterday asked the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) to return four 19th-century pulpit panels depicting Saint Augustine of Hippo, as they are “tools for evangelization” and not artworks.

The panels’ illegal removal from the Archdiocesan Shrine of Patrocinio de Maria Santisima in Boljoon, Cebu was a sacrilege, Palma said.

“They should never have been treated, then or now, as mere artworks for exhibition in museums, much less for private appreciation by the collectors who purchased them. For these panels are considered in the ecclesial rite as tools of evangelization,” he added.

The panels were reportedly removed without permission from the local ordinary at the time of previous Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal.

Private collectors Edwin and Aileen Bautista gave the panels to the NMP last week.

The donors reportedly legally procured the panels.

Palma explained there is no official record at the Archdiocesan Archives or the chancery office of any request from the parish priest at the time, Fr. Faustino Cortes, to deconsecrate the panels for removal, much less conveyance to third parties in exchange for monetary purposes of the parish.

Even if such a request was made, it would not have been approved, he added.

The Code of Canon Law No. 1284 states that administrators or parish priests are bound to exercise vigilance so that goods entrusted to them are not lost or do not suffer damage.

“These panels are sacred objects of the church where, for centuries, Augustinian friars delivered sermons to the faithful,” Palma noted.