THE DEMISE OF THE CENTENNIAL: History, Liturgy, and Political Reckoning

 

The planned centennial of the Battle of Agtawagon Hill on October 24, 1997, was intended to be the crown jewel of the municipal administration's civic calendar. Yet, when the day arrived, there were no speeches, no drum and bugle corps, and no historic unveiling. The grand commemoration collapsed entirely under the weight of three converging forces—historical truth, liturgical reality, and a decisive political shift.

               1. The Liturgical Fallacy Dismantled

To justify holding a massive secular celebration and public dance on October 24—and to dismiss Fr. Tito’s insistence on a sacrosanct vespera—civic proponents with the help of some ordained ministers argued that the feast of St. Rafael on October 24 was merely a modern, 20th-century introduction. They pointed to the 1921 General Roman Calendar revisions that canonically codified St. Rafael’s feast on that date, claiming the local civic event predated the "religious" assignment.

This argument was completely untenable under archival scrutiny. The Calendario Manual y Guia de Forasteros de las Islas Filipinas of 1839 had already marked October 24 as the feast of San Rafael Arcangel, placing it alongside December 8 for the Inmaculada Concepcion.

Furthermore, 19th-century colonial manuscripts in the Varias Provincias collection at the National Archives of the Philippines provide irrefutable proof: by 1885, the parish of Balete—then comprising 14 historic barrios—was already officially observing its patronal feast every October 24 in honor of St. Rafael the Archangel. The devotion itself ran deep in colonial history, popularized in the archipelago by the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God (Hermanos de San Juan de Dios) as early as the 17th century. The attempt by 1990s civic leaders to frame the October 24 parish feast as a recent innovation was fundamentally historically flawed.

2. The Verdict of the Archives and Oral Tradition

In early 1997, seeking to prepare authoritative materials for the upcoming centenary, an archival and oral history investigation was undertaken to uncover primary sources and testimonies detailing the supposed October 24, 1897 battle.

The findings were fatal to the civic narrative. The research uncovered no primary historical basis or archival documentation establishing that any major battle between Katipuneros and Spanish cazadores occurred on Agtawagon Hill on October 24, 1897.

Oral history further unraveled the legend. Local elders like Jose Dandoy noted that no battle ever took place on Agtawagon during the Spanish period; it was merely a station where Rafael Maraingan’s group rested and sought spiritual strength before staging an ambush elsewhere in Mauebong. Crucially, the very label used on civic banners—"El Tiroteo de Agtawagon"—was revealed to have originated in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when a local minibus operator asked his sisters to translate "The Battle of Agtawagon" into Spanish to paint on his vehicle’s headboard. Over the decades, unsuspecting organizers mistook this modern transport label for an authentic historical event.

When researchers revisited the past and weighed the unvalidated souvenir program claims against real archival manuscripts and oral evidence, the grandiose plan to celebrate the centennial was permanently abandoned.

3. Political Collapse at the Grassroots

The final blow was delivered at the ballot box. In May 1997, just months before the planned centennial, the Philippines held its synchronized Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.

The results were a total political landslide. The incumbent Mayor, who had championed the confrontational civic agenda against the parish and pushed the Agtawagon narrative, suffered complete political ruin. His allied Punong Barangays across all nine barangays of Balete were defeated. With the entire municipal political machinery dismantled at the grassroots, the political will, funding, and leadership required to stage the October 1997 centennial completely evaporated.

The silent passing of October 24, 1997, vindicated Fr. Tito’s earlier pulpit warnings. True heroism and authentic community identity cannot be built on fabricated dates, unexamined souvenir programs, or political posturing. As Fr. Albert Nolan, OP, incisively observed, Jesus and His message have often been honored and worshipped for what He did not mean rather than what He did—a supreme irony where things opposed in spirit are resurrected in His name. The quiet collapse of the centennial served as a stark reminder that while political power can organize a public dance, it cannot rewrite archival history or eclipse the deep, enduring faith of a people.

 

THE EMPTY CHAPEL BY THE BELFRY: Superstition, Solidarity, and the Unfinished Limits of Grace

 "No man is an island, entire of itself... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

When John Donne penned those iconic lines—later immortalized in Ernest Hemingway’s classic—he captured a profound, timeless truth: death, just like life, is never a solitary event. It is a communal act. When the parish bell tolls above a village, its dark knell echoes not just for the departed, but through the shared body of the whole community. Every loss diminishes the collective, calling the living into a covenant of shared grief and solidarity.

Yet, there is an existing chapel adjacent to the very belfry where those bells hang at St. Rafael Church—built with clear intention to honor that communal bond, yet quiet in its original purpose.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, as Fr. Tito Gelito’s Theology of Life took root in Balete, the parish didn’t stop at pastoral songs, youth theater, or the transition from the Arancel to the Pledge System. Through the Bueoligan sa Parokya ni San Rafael—our parish-based credit union built on the oath "Rong pagpas-an ku krus it pag-iegmanghuran"—the community sought to strip away the economic burdens of daily survival.

Tucked inside the archives of that era—specifically during the final years of Fr. Tito’s term in the mid-1990s—lies the blueprint of an ambitious, deeply compassionate initiative for which that room beside the belfry was designated: The Mortuary Aid.

It was explored and presented to the parish as the socialized, faith-based counterpart to the corporate burial insurance offered by big commercial companies today. Long before private insurers turned end-of-life care into a profitable market, the Core Group recognized how heavily the poor were crushed by the exorbitant costs of dying. When a family lost a loved one, grief was instantly compounded by the crushing expense of commercial funeral parlors, coffins, and wake spaces. To counter this commercialization of grief and reclaim death as a communal act of Christian solidarity, the Core Group proposed a socialized mortuary service:

• The room beside the belfry was set aside and prepared as a free, dignified wake chapel for deceased community members.
• Daily morning Masses would be offered for the repose of the soul throughout the wake.
• A high-quality, dignity-restoring display coffin would be manufactured by the parish and lent for temporary use during the wake, after which the deceased would be transferred to a modest, ordinary wooden box for burial.
• The entire ecosystem would be sustained by a simple 10-peso monthly addition to each member’s parish pledge.

It was an extraordinary piece of structural solidarity—a logical extension of a Church trying to accompany its people from the cradle to the grave, replacing corporate insurance policies with a covenant of mutual aid.

Then came the survey.

When Fr. Tito’s Core Group presented the operational plan to the faithful across the barrios in those mid-1990s consultations, expecting gratitude for an economic lifeline, they were met instead with a resounding, psychological wall of rejection. To the popular mind, the program was felt to be inherently ominous—tueoy—a bad omen, a dark invitation tempting death to cross one's threshold simply by preparing for it.

The Mortuary Aid was never implemented, and the chapel by the belfry was never used for the wake service it was meant to host. The project was quietly set aside right there, not because it lacked financial logic or Christian charity, but because it ran headlong into the stubborn, ancient bedrock of local superstition.

As years passed, the proposal faded into local history. The parish priests who came after Fr. Tito had no idea the blueprint or the survey ever existed, leaving the chapel's original intended purpose lost to time.

Yet, that mid-90s chapter remains a humbling, watershed moment in our parish history. It revealed a stark pastoral reality: a community can undergo years of sophisticated conscientization, embrace progressive social analysis, and actively participate in structural economic reforms, yet still remain deeply bound by primal human fears. The cultural psyche does not move at the speed of pastoral decrees.

Though the Mortuary Aid was shelved—and though the broader Bueoligan credit union itself faced exile during a later interregnum before Fr. Jarvin Aguelo sought to revive its embers years down the road—that chapel by the belfry stands today as a vital witness.

It gives our parish story a raw, unvarnished character. It reminds us that a genuine "Church of the Poor" is not a romanticized ideal where the grassroots are always enlightened and heroic. A true journeying Church is messy. It is a place where high theology meets everyday superstition, where brilliant social programs clash with cultural anxieties, and where shepherds must learn the slow, agonizing patience of meeting people precisely where their fears reside.

That empty chapel beneath the tolling bell remains a silent monument to an enduring truth about the nature of our Christian journey. As St. Augustine famously reminds us, holiness is never a solo race to a finish line, but a shared walk of a community continually bearing one another's burdens and flaws. Synodality is not about celebrating only our swift, unblemished victories; it is about having the grace to slow our pace, linking arms with one another through our unfinished, superstitious, and deeply human limits as we walk together toward God.

 

CON VENIRE: The Open Doors of Pautwas and the Pastoral Hospice of Fr. Tito

 

To sit beside Fr. Tito Gelito at the breakfast table after a morning Mass was to walk the road to Emmaus. In those quiet hours, over simple food, Scripture didn't feel like a dusty, ancient scroll—it felt alive, burning within us as he broke open the Word and shared his vision of the Kingdom.

He was my mentor, and his whole life was a masterclass in a profound, unvarnished theology: a true Theology of Life rooted in "Pagpas-an ku krus it pag-iegmanghuran".

Fr. Tito often reminded us of the root of the word convent: con-venire—a place where everyone is called to come together, a space of gathering. And how literally that truth came to life in Balete!

Under his care, the parish rectory was never a pristine, secluded administrative office. It slowly, organically transformed into a hospice for the broken. The weary, the depressed, the downtrodden, the widow, the paraplegic, the lost, the ostracized, the sick of mind and of body, the dying, the marginalized, and the forgotten little ones of our town didn't just visit—they came to stay.

Among them was Ng Jun, a retired civil servant who, despite being modestly well-to-do, was sick and felt rejected by his family, choosing the sanctuary of the convent over his own home. There was Junior, suffering from tuberculosis, who was sent to the care of the Missionaries of Charity in an adjacent town, but out of longing for home, opted to return to the warmth of the convent. There was a man sick of mind who, out of his own volition, preferred to stay within the safe, welcoming air of the rectory. And there was Budoy, a paraplegic who frequented the company of the convent boys, drawing comforting words and quiet strength from Fr. Tito. Among them, too, were his "convent boys"—brilliant, self-taught mechanics who could fix anything on wheels, even if their heavy drinking habits made them a constant, patient cross for him to bear.

Despite the meager parish funds, Fr. Tito never complained about the extra mouths to feed or the endless demand for medicine. He saw to it that every person who crossed that threshold received a decent meal, proper care, and basic human dignity.

That same spirit of radical hospitality spilled out onto the roads of Balete aboard Pautwas. Constructed by a genius junkshop mechanic from rag-tagged parts, that unpainted, customized paog-paog pickup was far more than a priest's ride. In an era when the municipality suffered a complete dearth of emergency transport, Pautwas served as the community ambulance. Day or night, it rattled down dusty or muddy trails, carrying the sick and the dying to distant clinics—a rolling instrument of the corporal works of mercy.

He lived this ministry with zero pretense. He preferred wearing polo shirts sewn from katsa—the humble flour sack cloth—embodying a simplicity that matched his vehicle.

People saw him through many lenses:

• To his family, he was already a living saint.
• To his Dominican classmate and former rector of UST, Fr. Norberto Castillo, OP, he was fondly remembered for his sharp, argumentative mind.
• To his Augustinian peers at the Ecclesiastical Faculties—Fr. Mamerto Alfeche, Fr. Jing Mejorada, and Roger Objaan—he was a formidable theological equal.
• To younger priests like Fr. Vars and Fr. Jarvin, he was a guiding mentor.
• To pastoral collaborators like Msgr. JoePar and Msgr. Pet Frac, his structural programs were a gold standard worth emulating and refining.
• To the rest of the clergy in the Diocese of Kalibo, his path was widely recognized as a daunting one to replicate—a ministry that demanded an absolute emptying of self, a daily dying to oneself so that the least of God's people might live.
• To the unchurched and the seasonal churchgoers, Fr. Tito was often perceived as strict and unyielding; they attended liturgical celebrations with a quiet deference, half-afraid that the priest might scold them publicly from the pulpit. But to those who truly knew him, that strictness was never malice—it was the fierce, protective instinct of a shepherd guarding his flock. He was kind but firm, deeply considerate yet unhesitating when it came to instilling discipline. He smelled like his sheep, he knew them by name, and they knew him.

In an age where ministry is so easily tempted by professional efficiency and institutional comfort, Fr. Tito’s open convent stands as a quiet, revolutionary witness. He proved that the corporal works of mercy are not formal parish projects to be budgeted and audited; they are a way of being. By opening his table, his car, and his very life to the broken, he showed us that when the Church truly becomes con-venire, Christ himself comes to dwell in our midst to break bread with us.

 

A Prayer for the Table Companions

Lord God, Lord of the Road and Master of the Feast,

We thank You for the grace of the open table at the Balete convent, where no one was a stranger and every broken soul found a home. We remember with deep gratitude the quiet saints, the shepherds, the helpers, the mechanics, the widows, and the weary who once broke bread with us under that humble roof.

Grant eternal rest and peace to Your faithful servants: Fr. Tito Gelito, Msgr. Pedro Frac, Fr. Vio Dandoy, and Fr. Marlon Rasgo; Ng Jun, Ng Donnie, Tay Loven, Nay Tessie, Nay Tesing, Nay Floring, Tay Norbing, Tay Aton, and Ng. Paeng; Bebe, Lagumbay, Antog, Era, Junior, Martin, Tay Delon, Tay Turing, and Nay Inday; Nay Nene, Nay Biday, Nay Lagring, Nay Gloria, and the many unnamed souls whose footsteps once graced the convent corridors.

Welcome them now to Your eternal banquet in heaven, where the bread is never meager, the doors are never closed, and the table is prepared for all. May perpetual light shine upon them. Amen.

 

 

WALKING TOGETHER AT THE GRASSROOTS: A Synodal Reflection on Pastoral Renewal in Balete

 

As the global Catholic Church enters the era of Synodality—a call by Pope Francis and reechoed by Pope Leo XIV for a Church that “walks together” through communion, participation, and mission—the Philippine Church finds itself revisiting its rich history of local grassroots renewal. Long before synodality became the defining paradigm of the global Church, the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) envisioned a "Renewed Church" realized through Basic Christian Communities (BCCs/BECs).

Examining the pastoral legacy of Msgr. Pedro "Pete" C. Frac in St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Balete, Aklan through the contemporary lens of Synodality reveals how his governance was not an isolated historical chapter, but a living prototype of what it means to be a Synodal Church at the Grassroots.

1. Transparency as an Instrument of Communion

A synodal Church cannot grow where trust is absent. Pope Francis’ call for financial and administrative transparency is rooted in the belief that the Church is a shared home where all the baptized are co-responsible.

In Balete, Msgr. Frac operationalized this synodal value through parochial communications. By publishing Apdo—a monthly journal written in Inakeanon—the parish did not merely share catechesis, marriage banns, and local news; it made parish balance sheets open to every parishioner. Disclosing pledge collections (Bueoligan), capelya shares, convent budgets, and the parish priest's daily food allowance demystified church governance. Rather than viewing the parish as an opaque hierarchy, the community saw a shared household. Investing in a parish Risograph machine to print the weekly vernacular missalette Guinakabuhi ("Lived") further ensured that the Word of God was physically printed by, for, and in the language of the local community.

2. Lay Empowerment and Collaborative Ministry (Participation)

Synodality rejects clericalism, insisting that the Holy Spirit speaks through the entire Sensus Fidelium (sense of the faithful). It demands that the laity, consecrated religious, and clergy walk side by side.

Msgr. Frac embodied this co-responsibility by inviting the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (SFIC) to establish a permanent presence in Balete. Working directly with neighborhood clusters and remote capelyas, the SFIC sisters animated the BCCs and engaged the youth through theater arts. This was not mere recreation; it was a pastoral process of conscientization—empowering young people to critically examine socio-economic realities and give voice to their faith in local public squares.

Furthermore, by issuing a joint appeal with the Diocesan Catechetical Ministry to Catholic public school teachers to serve as catechists, Msgr. Frac sought to tap into the common priesthood of the laity. He recognized that public educators possessed both the pedagogical skill and daily proximity to young students needed to impart meaningful faith formation.

3. Integrated Human Ecology as Mission

A Synodal Church is an "outgoing Church" (Iglesia en salida) that leaves the sanctuary to accompany humanity in its concrete struggles. In Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis reminds us that true mission connects spiritual life with social justice and ecological care.

Msgr. Frac’s pastoral vision integrated faith directly with local livelihoods:

• Academic & Scientific Collaboration: He invited scholars from Hohenheim University (Stuttgart, Germany) to study and optimize indigenous upland rice varieties (Bisaya).
• Sustainable Inland Aquaculture: He brought in experts from the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC) to assess sustainable fish-farming for local inland waters.
• Organic Agriculture: Partnering with the MASIPAG network, he promoted vermiculture, organic composting (dapog), and chemical-free farming to liberate local farmers from financial debt and environmental degradation.

By linking the table of the Eucharist to the health of local rice fields and rivers, the parish demonstrated that a synodal mission must listen to both the "cry of the earth and the cry of the poor."

The state of the Basic Christian Community under Msgr. Frac shows that synodality is neither a novel abstraction nor a corporate management style; it is the natural expression of a Church that dares to walk together.

As the Philippine Church navigates its synodal journey today, the experience of Balete under Msgr. Frac offers a enduring lesson: real ecclesial renewal happens not through individual celebrity, but through institutionalized transparency, deep lay collaboration, youth conscientization, and ecological stewardship. Through these concrete pastoral innovations, faith ceases to be a distant Sunday ritual and becomes, in the truest sense, Guinakabuhi—a faith co-created and lived by all.

 

VERMICULTURE as a concrete Christian Witnessing: The story of Donie, Nono and Pido

 

In the landscape of modern Christian witnessing, the abstract often struggles to find a home. Faith can easily devolve into a series of transactional rituals or privatized devotions, detached from the gritty socio-economic realities of the community. Yet, the ecclesial history of the Parish of St. Rafael the Archangel in Balete, Aklan, offers a profound, concrete alternative. Long before papal encyclicals like Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ (2015) popularized "integral ecology," or national statutes like the Organic Agriculture Act of 2010 legislated sustainable farming, the Katilingban of Balete was already weaving a thick, living theology. By fusing the structural reform of the parish financial system with grassroots ecological community organizing, Balete’s Basic Christian Communities (BCC-CO) incarnated a powerful triad: the subversive grace of St. Augustine, the historical struggle of Gustavo Gutiérrez and Leonardo Boff, and the restless, enduring hope of Jürgen Moltmann, all localized through the biblical, historical insights of Fr. Tito Gelito and the dept community organizing skill of Msgr. Pedro Frac.

In the classical theology of liberation, struggle is not just about political rights; it is about breaking the chains of systemic dependencies that keep people poor. The introduction of synthetic, chemical-based agriculture (often pushed by multi-national corporations and heavily marketed government projects like the destructive Golden Kohol) created a cycle of economic bondage for Filipino farmers. They became dependent on expensive, imported inputs, eroding both their financial independence and the health of their land.

Under Fr. Tito Gelito—and building on the pastoral foundations of Fr. Joe Parohinog in the late 1970s—the introduction of the African Night Crawler and Japanese Red Worm was a quiet act of defiance. It sought to liberate the farmers from this dependency. By reviving the dagyaw (the traditional Aklanon culture of communal, voluntary cooperative labor), the parish showed that the struggle for economic survival and ecological integrity could be won together. Witnessing here was not a sermon; it was a collective hands-on effort to build an alternative, self-reliant way of life. It drew away from the institutional down to the communal way of life.

Our previous reflection on Augustine’s grace noted that it acts as a quiet, transforming energy that subverts dominant, corrupt structures. Unlike the loud, high-profile government programs launched with "media blitzes and hosannas," the true seeds of transformation came discretely. They rode in the soiled pockets of volunteer community workers like late Ng. Donie Cuarton and Nono Romulo, arriving home from a BEC seminar in Bacolod in 1992/1993. Assisted by Pido, a gentle BEC worker from Negros, this was grace operating from the bottom up—unassuming, organic, and deeply relational. This is the very definition of Fr. Carlos Abesamis's "historical grace." It did not wait for a presidential decree or a DILG memorandum. It took root in the everyday, lived reality of poor communities, transforming ordinary worms into instruments of communal salvation.

Fr. Tito Gelito's "Theology of Life" integrated the material and the spiritual. It posits that the goods of the Earth are not commodities to be exploited, but "instruments and channels in a communal and familial journey with Jesus."  In this framework, feeding the worms, preparing the dapog (organic composting/seedbedding), and sharing the organic fertilizer became liturgical acts. It bridged the gap between Sunday worship and Monday survival. The same faith that led parishioners to shift from the Arancel to the Pledge System also led them to care for the soil. Both actions rejected a commercialized, transactional relationship—whether with the sacraments or with Mother Earth.

Today, while those worms have spread to places like Barangay Feliciano and Barangay Calizo, or even as far as Bulwang, Numancia, under the care of enterprising individuals and due to human frailty, and even though the Katilingban finds itself wandering AGAIN in the wilderness of "Massah and Meribah"—searching for the paths it once trod—Moltmann’s theology of hope (Theologia Spes) keeps the community restless and expectant. The memory of Balete’s pioneering witness remains a potent seed. It is a reminder that when a "little flock" organizes itself around the free outpouring of grace, the grit of historical struggle, and the deep, rich soil of community solidarity, the Word of God is guaranteed to bear fruit—thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. The fact that this community is still "hopeful as ever of finding its way back to the path it once trod" proves that the seed sown in the 1990s was not lost. The history of the St. Rafael vermiculture project serves as a permanent reference point—a reminder to the younger generation that a self-sustaining, ecologically sound, and deeply fraternal Church is not an impossible dream. It is a burning reality they have already lived. It such a reality that’s worthy of setting up on a hill for all to remember as we observe and celebrate today our Golden Jubilee as a Diocese.

As for those once called, may they find the courage to bend their knees in prayer: “Call us anew, O Lord, and in our paths in the world, make us once more, channels of your peace.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

VESPERA and the Battle for the Soul of the Fiesta

 

During the tenure of Fr. Tito Gelito, the relationship between the local government unit and the local Church in Balete was defined by a necessary, critical tension. Nowhere was this collision of values more pronounced than in the annual celebration of the town fiesta.

To Fr. Tito, a parish fiesta was never meant to be a commercialized spectacle. Part of his comprehensive pastoral program was the recovery of the barrio and municipal fiestas as genuine religious events—sacred moments to glorify the wonders of God through the witness of His saints. Over the decades, however, civic authorities had secularized these traditions. Fiestas had drifted into events that exploited young girls through ostentatious beauty pageants and robbed poor farmers of their hard-earned harvest money through day-long cockfighting.

To counter the spiritual dilution of the parish feast, Fr. Tito sought to reclaim the sanctity of the vesperas—the eve of the fiesta. He anchored his theological stand on the very root of the word: vespera, the Church's ancient evening prayer. In Balete, the vespera served as the solemn culmination of the nine-day novena. Rather than opening the evening up to noisy street parties, the parish capped the novena with a dramatic, reflective presentation mounted by the parish youth, followed immediately by the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for a quiet, communal Holy Hour.

Crucially, Fr. Tito was not against the binayle (public dance) or bueang (cockfighting) per se. He understood them as legitimate expressions of communal joy and cultural manifestations—vibrant celebrations of gratitude and release for a bountiful harvest, answered prayers, and God's abundant graces throughout the year. He believed these frenzies of human happiness belonged on the fiesta itself as a joyful climax, not on the quiet eve or during the breaking of bread meant for spiritual preparation and celebration.

Thus, he proposed a simple, reasonable compromise to the civil government and the cockfighting aficionados: hold the binayle on the night of October 24, leaving the night of the 23rd sacrosanct for vespera, and hold the derby a day earlier.

The organizers of the derby honored his request. Those organizing the binayle, however, remained obstinate.

The municipal leadership stubbornly refused to yield, justifying its competing civic agenda by tying the October 24 festivities to the historical commemoration of the Battle of Agtawagon Hill. Local tradition held that on October 24, 1897, a heroic band of Aklanon Katipuneros fought valiantly against well-armed Spanish cazadores, repelling the colonial forces on that majestic elevation.

When the civil government refused to honor the sacred character of the vesperas or adjust the timing of the public dance, Fr. Tito took a radical, uncompromising stand: in 1995, he officially moved the parish liturgical celebration of St. Rafael from its traditional October 24 date to October 23.

It was a bold declaration that the altar would not be co-opted by secular entertainment or political grandstanding.

Yet, as an act of profound Christian charity—and to prove that his stand was born of pastoral conviction rather than personal spite—Fr. Tito still offered Mass on October 24. It was not a solemn Eucharistic celebration for St. Rafael, but an intentional Mass offered for the so-called heroes of Agtawagon.

In his sermon, he used the pulpit to offer a stirring critique of what true heroism demands:

"A hero is not someone who hides in the shadows merely to survive, but someone who is ready to lay down his life for others."

Then came his piercing, prophetic challenge to the town leaders sitting in the pews. He wondered out loud about the glaring failure of the civil government to even identify the specific heroes of Agtawagon. At the time, Balete completely lacked an authoritative, rigorous historical account. All the municipality possessed were the brief, unverified write-ups printed in the souvenir programs of annual fiesta celebrations—sanitized narratives passed down without archival backing or textual scrutiny. He questioned how the municipality could be breathlessly anticipating a grand centennial celebration by 1997 on such flimsy, unexamined ground.

Meanwhile, the local government pushed forward, grandly preparing for what was supposed to be a monumental civic milestone: the Centenary of the Battle of Agtawagon Hill on October 24, 1997. Elaborate plans were drawn up to celebrate the centenary of the local revolutionaries' alleged triumph over the Spanish crown.

Yet, when October 24, 1997 arrived, the grand centenary celebration never took place.

The music was silent, the speeches were canceled, and the planned civic spectacle evaporated into thin air. Why such a heavily publicized historical commemoration collapsed at the eleventh hour is a story worth telling—or rather, a piece of local history that urgently demands to be revisited.