Quiboloy: From Pampanga to the Land of Promise

When newspapers reported that the Philippine National Police who raided the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) compound in Davao City recently “heard, using ground penetrating radar, the ‘heartbeat’ of KOJC head Pastor Apollo C. Quiboloy” who they suspected was still within the compound inside a bunker, I saw this reporting under two lenses. First, as a Dabawenyo. Contrary to ignorant sniping by non-Dabawenyos, not everyone here in Mindanao is a supporter of Quiboloy. But whatever his faults and flaws, many here feel that the manhunt for the pastor has truly been an overkill, as though this government is obsessed with the desire to capture him.

But the phrase about Quiboloy’s heartbeat really caught my attention. From a critical point of view, I wondered how a radar could tell if the supposed sound they heard was that of the pastor’s. Does the PNP have gadgets that identify the owner of a heartbeat? On a more serious note, one possible root of the surname Quiboloy is quibol, a Kapampangan word that means "to throb’ or ‘throbbing’. I was once again struck by this genealogical connection: the family name of Quiboloy means ‘to throb’ and the thing the police has been bragging about the past few days is supposedly hearing the pastor’s heartbeat under his compound. I know it’s a stretch, but you could not make this kind of connection up!

The Quiboloys of Davao City were not originally from the city. In fact, they are not even from any neighboring towns or provinces of Mindanao, but from Lubao, Pampanga. The family name was spelled QUIBULUY and QUIBULOY back in Pampanga, although some already started using the current spelling - QUIBOLOY - as early as the 1900s. They originated from the barrios of Santa Catalina and Santa Teresa in Lubao and were a poor farming family by the turn of the twentieth century, although at least one direct ancestor of Apollo was consistently addressed in records as “Don Mariano Quibuluy”, indicating some position in his barangay at the very least. And while later generations were not wealthy, they were known for their intellectual pursuits. And with their intellectual tendencies, many of the Quiboloys diverged from the prevailing Catholic faith. By the arrival of the Americans, the Quiboloys had wholeheartedly embraced the protestant faith and Barrio Sta. Catalina became the hub of a religious shift with many Quiboloys embracing Methodism, making the Quiboloys stand out for their religious dissent.

Pastor Apollo’s grandfather, Dionisio, was described as a man with “sound perception of purpose, lucid reasoning ability, and a strong, indomitable will.” He married Anastasia Turla and one of their children, Jose, married Maria Carreon, and were Apollo’s parents. Another son, Delfin, is one of the Kapampangan poet laureates and wrote more than 200 poems, novels, and zarzuelas. Still another son, Alejandro, was a prominent municipal councilor in Lubao who would later work for the community development sector of the government. He was also a well-known protestant pastor.

According to Marlen V. Ronquillo, Apollo’s parents, “were not unlettered peasant agitators like many others who were forcibly shipped to Mindanao.” It is said that Jose felt “disgusted that most of the land in Lubao was owned by just a few families” so they left Lubao and settled in Mindanao, always advertised by the government as the ‘Land of Promise’. The Quiboloys, like many migrant families before them, adopted Davao as their new home. It is also interesting to note that among the nine children of Jose and Maria Quiboloy, Apollo is the only one born in Davao City.

Davao City has always welcomed people from various places, and the city’s history has forged a strong loyalty of its people to their adopted home and with their fellow migrant families.