Our Lady of Guadalupe, Valladolid Parish

The Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish Church in Valladolid

This is a prominent structure in our small town Valladolid, which was named after a town in Spain by the friars.  My grandmother’s and my mother’s generations had experienced masses delivered in Latin here (Catholic masses in our town were delivered in Latin before while the officiating priest has his back to the people).

Everything then was very Spanish.  This was built in the 1800s and it looks it.  It faces the Municipal Hall, the plaza and is adjacent to the town’s public market -a typical Spanish pueblo.

The back part of the church -ruins

This is a prominent edifice in my life too.  I remember several families including mine taking shelter under its sturdy roof whenever a typhoon comes when I was younger.  We felt much safer within its walls than in our dilapidated bamboo and nipa houses which shake with the strong typhoon wind, the roofs flapping with every gust.  We would use pews as our bed and I would think that this was like a rich man’s big stone house that could withstand all of nature’s beatings.  The church was like a hotel, so spacious, so grand, so comfortable.  I never wanted to leave even after the storm has passed.  Inside, we were all oblivious to the harshness of the weather and the state of our already destroyed houses.  The good parish priest then would give us cans of sardines and a kilo or two of rice before we go back to our homes.  He knew there wouldn’t be anything left for us to eat.

My adolescent years were spent serving the church.  I didn’t want to be anywhere else.  I sought comfort in the friendship formed within when home was full of adult mistakes and crap.  I cried and prayed at the altar when my future seemed bleak.  Most of us were broken and the church was our refuge.  When its convent caught fire several years ago, we all cried.  How can we not?  It was the symbol of our youth.  There were so many memories spent in there.

The prayer house is located on the right side of the church

Then I digressed.  I was too busy being an adult, being smart and arrogant.  When I came back, only a few familiar faces were left serving it.  The walls are still resilient but the roofs and windows have given in to the years.  The successive priests assigned to the parish have tried their best to keep everything together, renovating a few parts here and there through donations.  But it’s not as indestructible as it was before.  Its convent hasn’t even been rebuilt yet.  Or maybe I’m just missing something here.  Maybe it really is immortal and imposing, in a tossed and torn up way.

A few months ago, I heard that a millionaire (who was born and grew up in our town) donated around 5 million

the interior of the prayer house

pesos to have its roof repaired.  It was a good thing because I experienced going to mass while raining and rainwater was trickling everywhere that churchgoers had to huddle at a place that wasn’t wet yet.  It was heartbreaking.

I’m sorry I haven’t turned into a famed person of great means so I can finance its renovation. But I’m doing what I know best.  I write about it.