Cebuanos making Church history!

Last Tuesday afternoon, the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral was overflowing with people from all walks of life, including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) herself, attending a very rare occasion, the ordination of Most Reverend Monsignor Francisco "Pangkoy" Montecillo Padilla as Papal Nuncio to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. He is the second Cebuano to be appointed as Papal Nuncio. The first Cebuano to be given that honor is his own elder brother, Archbishop Osbaldo M. Padilla, Papal Nuncio to Costa Rica. Indeed, the Padilla family, which hails from Cebu, the very place where Christianity was born in Asia, boasts of a record in the Catholic Church of having produced two Papal Nuncios. It’s a very unique honor.

History was also made last Tuesday, as it was the first Episcopal ordination ever held outside of the Vatican as per the request by the Padilla family since their matriarch, Mrs. Conscesa Padilla, was too ill to travel to Rome. In the end, she was still too ill to go to the Metropolitan Cathedral. Pope Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Padilla last April 1. Close friends fondly call him Pangkoy… though it was my first time to meet him; he was introduced to me by his classmate at Sto. Niño… my wife, Jessica.

Watching the solemn ordination ceremonies was quite moving as most of the prayers were sang in Latin, just like what we usually hear on television. It made me think that this was held in the midst of the showing of that controversial book-turned-into-a-movie The Da Vinci Code that many so wrongly thought would have brought down the Catholic Church.

In his homily, our beloved eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal took a potshot at this controversy, saying, "Do not allow yourselves to be confused, my brothers and sisters in Christ. The Church has always been guided by the Holy Spirit and when in the early years of Christianity it chose certain books as inspired and rejected others as false and deceiving. The Church is in the possession of the truth and it knows what conforms to this truth and what does not." How timely for the Cardinal to say this. As we’ve learned in Catholic history, even at the times when we had bad Popes, when they were too busy doing their evil deeds, they didn’t care to change the doctrines of the Church.

Perhaps the most comforting words come from our Lord Jesus Christ himself when He promised St. Peter that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against his Church… and that He would be with us till the end of time.

* * *

When I read the news a few months ago that a huge Korean conglomerate would establish a shipbuilding facility in Subic, the first thought that came into my mind was that the Philippines was at last joining this very exclusive club of "Asian Tigers" as the biggest shipbuilders of the world.

Proudly, in the Philippines, Balamban, Cebu’s Tsuneishi Heavy Industries has already been operating for the past 10 years, putting the Philippines on the map as a builder of quality ships.

But putting up a shipyard creates a new set of problems and the biggest one is where this new company would get welders. When Tsuneishi opened up in Cebu, it also experienced the same problem. Seeing this to be a potential problem, while presenting an opportunity, the Aboitiz Construction Group’s Metaphil Division signed last Tuesday evening a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to establish the Metaphil-TESDA Institute for Technical Training (MTITT) to address our future needs.

No doubt, the creation of this institute is quite timely because if we are to follow the path of the Asian Tigers and become at least a tiger cub, our educational system shouldn’t only produce white-collar graduates, but allow those who cannot afford a college education to acquire the skills needed for the many other jobs available in this country today. I learned from TESDA regional director Ernesto Beltran that this partnership between TESDA and Metaphil is a first of its kind in the country.

The MOA signed by Beltran and Metaphil president and COO Napoleon R. Pe thus opens up an opportunity for those people who want to learn special skills with the assurance of getting good-paying jobs. With the prospect of the opening of the Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. (ACMDC) in Toledo City, all the more would this institute be of great value to blue-collar workers.

* * *

Here’s a letter in response to our article on ethanol and coco-diesel:

"Dear Mr. Avila, There is already a law encompassing your advocacy on biodiesel and ethanol - the law of supply and demand. People adapt to situations. The AC jeep was gasoline-fed and carried eight passengers then. Now it’s diesel-fed and carries as (few) as 16 passengers. Becoming common are 22-passenger jeepneys.

"Taxis are shifting to LPG, the price of which is beginning to soar. Now we have mega taxis. Your story of Mr. Ygot is a clear adaptation of the law of supply and demand. The biofuel act being deliberated upon only benefits the few and intends not to include more. Petroleum fuel is harmful to the engine and the atmosphere (acid rain, global warming, health hazards, etc.) yet accepted. Ygot’s story is a defense of coco oil as diesel oil.

"Cooking oil with our engine conditioner becomes organic motor oil, (which has) longer use. The same cooking oil with our engine conditioner is as good as diesel fuel. Why blend gasoline and alcohol when there’s a better way — our hybrid solution? Our hybrid solution is water-based with less than five percent denatured 90+ percent ethyl alcohol and combustion enhancers. Connected to the intake manifold of any engine (gas, diesel, LPG, CNG, two- and four-stroke, carbureted, fuel-injected), the solution is agitated to release combustion-enhancing vapors to mix with the fuel vapors in the combustion chamber.

"The results are: Engine excels pollution tests, close to 0.001; longest engine usefulness; lowest maintenance and downtime expenses; much longer service use of lube oil; stronger, quicker response engine; reduced driver fatigue; and fuel savings are more than 90 percent (driver-dependent). Many engines with hybrid solutions are running already, R.C. Posadas. KGMD Mktg."

Thanks Mr. Posadas. Everyone seems to have solutions to our problems, except the people in the government. Someday they’ll get there.

* * *

For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website (www.philstar.com). He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.