BOHOL ... UN AN APRÈS !
Un an
après le puissant tremblement de terre qui a frappé l’île de Bohol dans les
Visayas, les reconstructions de certaines églises et basiliques, datant de la
période coloniale espagnole, vont pouvoir commencer.
Si certaines vont être
restaurées, d’autres devront être reconstruites. Malheureusement, certains
monuments réduits à l’état de poussières de corail, sont a tout jamais perdus.
C’est
le cas de l’église de Maribojoc, de laquelle ne subsiste que la statue du ‘’Christ
Roi’’.
“I can accept the idea that maybe a few of these churches might just be
left as ruins, never to be rebuilt,”Bishop Leonardo Medroso, head of the
Diocese of Tagbilaran, said. “But others are going to be restored.”
It has been almost a year since the so-called Great Eastern Bohol
Earthquake damaged many churches in Medroso’s diocese and already he is
overseeing the construction of alternative churches beside the ruins of what
were once considered jewels of Spanish missionary architecture in Bohol
province.
Twenty-five of the province’s churches—10 of them built by Jesuit and
Recollect missionaries during the Spanish period—were either destroyed or
suffered varying degrees of damage.
Priceless objects and artifacts in the parish museums of Loboc and
Maribojoc towns were not spared.
Nearby Cebu Island fared a little better, as only eight churches were
damaged, the worst being the damage to the belfry of Basilica Minore del Sto.
Niño, which was dramatically shown on social media.
Heritage agencies respond
Within hours of the earthquake, the Board of Commissioners of the
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the country’s equivalent
of a Department of Culture, immediately convened in Manila with Fr. Milan Ted
Torralba, the executive secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Cultural
Heritage of the Church, the heritage arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
the Philippines, attending the meeting.
The NCCA board counts among its members National Museum director Jeremy
Barns, National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) Chair Maria
Serena Diokno and National Archives of the Philippines Director Victorino
Manalo, all of whom are no strangers to the task ahead insofar as historic and
heritage structures are concerned.
Two days later, on Oct. 17, 2013, Torralba, who also heads the
Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church in the Diocese of
Tagbilaran, met with Barns and National Museum officials together with staff
from the NHCP to see the extent of damage in Baclayon and Loboc towns as well
as in the municipalities of Loon and Maribojoc.
Maribojoc and Loon were cut off from the capital, Tagbilaran, with the
collapse of the Abatan Bridge. Torralba had to hire two pump boats to bring the
team to the site.
The team saw Bohol’s largest Recollect church, which once stood proudly
amid a vast expanse of open space in Loon, was now nothing more than two piles
of coral rubble.
Christ the King statue
The church in Maribojoc, also built by the Recollects on a low hill,
suffered the same fate, with only the statue of Christ the King left standing,
showing not a crack or any sign of the tremendous stress that reduced the
church behind it to rubble.
The parish church of Loboc, located a few meters from a deep, wide
river, still stands. But it had lost its sanctuary, its convent-turned-museum
and its portico that was added by the Recollects sometime in the 1860s.
With the portico now just rubble, sections of the original façade, left
by the Jesuits when they were expelled from all of Spain and its colonies in
1768, are now exposed.
Perhaps to provide some shade to the friars and their parishioners as
they entered the church, later Recollect missionaries, those who served during
the second half of the 19th century (between the 1860s and the 1890s), added
porticos to the churches of Baclayon, Cortes, Loay and Dauis.
Modern materials
But all of them came crashing down as the earth heaved on Oct. 15 last
year, exposing the churches’ original façades that had been hidden for more
than a century.
During the American colonial period, Bohol’s secular priests built
churches following the old design. They used concrete and reinforced bars
instead of just lime mortar, and the façades of their churches fared better
during the earthquake.
The National Museum and the NHCP set up a protocol for the immediate
response to the disaster.
Teams were immediately organized in Manila and sent to the damaged
churches to begin documenting and cataloguing all broken pieces of carved and
dressed coral stone lying on the ground in and around the churches.
The National Museum, with its long history of archaeological work, was
best prepared to do the job. But the NHCP’s expertise in materials
characterization was vital to the task.
Instructions had earlier gone out to all the parishes not to clean the
churches and their surroundings and to leave each piece of stone, no matter the
size, right where it had fallen, a kind of crime scene preservation that would
help in the future should restoration be carried out.
Belfry’s rubble.
At Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño in Cebu, meanwhile, the Augustinian
missionaries who still run the church today, immediately called on Escuela
Taller in Intramuros to help in determining what to do with the rubble of the
belfry now strewn on the ground and across Pilgrims Center, a large open area
where Masses continue to be said every day.
Other damaged churches, like those in Carcar City and the towns of
Argao, Boljoon, Dalaguete and Sibonga, were inspected by members of the Cebu
Archdiocesan Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, led by its
conservation architect, Melva Rodriguez-Java.
Expériences, avis, critiques et commentaires, comme d’habitude sont les bienvenus.
Retrouvez-moi sur :
www.expatauxphilippines.blogspot.com
www.expatauxphilippines.blogspot.com
Ainsi que chaque jeudi de 18 à 20 h, 12 à 14 h en Europe sur Yahoo Messenger :
Pseudo < dtesteil >
Les articles de ce blog sont © Copyright protected. Leur reproduction, mise en réseau public ou privé, sous quelque forme sont interdites sans l'accord préalable de l'auteur.
Prendre sa retraite aux Philippines,
Pourquoi ?
7107 îles, plus de 36.000 kilomètres de côtes,
des milliers de plages de sable blanc, le soleil toute l’année ;
des montagnes qui culminent à plus de 3.000 mètres,
des milliers de plages de sable blanc, le soleil toute l’année ;
des montagnes qui culminent à plus de 3.000 mètres,
la jungle, les forêts, des paysages grandioses.
Une population chaleureuse et accueillante, des tribus colorées.
Un excellent service de santé à un prix abordable. Le coût de la vie,
un des plus bas au monde ; de nombreux avantages offerts aux retraités,pas d’impôts ni de taxes.
un des plus bas au monde ; de nombreux avantages offerts aux retraités,pas d’impôts ni de taxes.
Rendez-vous sur la page livres pour en savoir plus.
“Épouser une Femme Philippine”,
sous titré,
Chercher Trouver et Marier une Pinay,
S’adresse à tous les hommes occidentaux qui souhaitent trouver aux pays des 7.107 îles celle qui deviendra la compagne de leur vie.
Un livre complet qui aborde tous les sujets sans tabous.
Plus d’information sur la page ‘’livres’’
Mon petit livre
“101 façons de Générer des Revenus aux Philippines, pour y vivre’’ est maintenant disponible.
Vous trouverez plus d’information sur la page ‘’Livres’’
Comments