Without a doubt, the most popular and most widespread Catholic devotion in the Philippines is the Santo Niño, the devotion to the Holy Infant of Jesus. Proof of this is that while having originated from the Visayas, it has fanned out to all the ends of the archipelago.
Since winning the Signature Art Prize in 2011, Rodel Tapaya, 32, has become the darling of international art dealers, perhaps because of the curious story behind the work that won for him the top prize in the triennial contest sponsored by Asia-Pacific Breweries Foundation of Tiger Beer.
In an unprecedented move, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 youths, including a Muslim girl, during the Last Supper Mass on Thursday in a correctional for minors in Rome. He was reenacting Jesus Christ’s washing of the feet of his all-male 12 apostles, including Saint Peter, the first Pope.
Pope Francis, celebrating his first Palm Sunday in Vatican City as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, called for personal conversion to check greed and social iniquity “that hit the weakest” and the poor.
Perhaps because it had rained hard at twilight, the smoke that emitted from the Sistine Chapel chimney looked deceptively sooty, making everyone think that the fifth ballot had again been a failure.
In his first public Mass as the new head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis signaled a striking liturgical difference with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI by facing the people, not turning his back, which the retired Pontiff had done in a controversial attempt to bring back the Latin Mass banished by Vatican II.
Panay pride and Augustinian audacity were in full display when the University of San Agustin (USA) in Iloilo City celebrated the 60th anniversary of its elevation as a university last March 1 with a solemn High Mass of thanksgiving, a concert that featured a magnificent Olympic-style gallery of lights performed by some 2,000 students, and an impressive fireworks display.
Pope Benedict XVI’s shocking announcement that he would renounce the Petrine office on Feb. 28, the first pope to do so in more than 500 years, has served as a fitting fillip to a man whose ecclesiastical career has been characterized by a dramatic struggle to come to terms with the tumultuous history of the Catholic Church and its grappling with change and modernity.
There’s an inner glow in the women of Remy Boquiren, as if a mysterious fire like that which radiates from a gemstone has been placed at the heart of the figures, highly idealized and unabashedly romantic, as only a woman of the old school could render them. Boquiren calls them “that radiant, luminous effect,” an inner light that she situates at the chest and core of the figures.
Twenty-twelve was a year of retrospectives in the Philippine art world. The most significant from the vantage point of art history would be the multiple shows (at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, UST Museum, UP Vargas Museum and Metropolitan Museum) to mark the 10th birth anniversary of National Artist Carlos “Botong” Francisco.
At the 2012 Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), politics and business, sex and violence, wrestling and the prize Pulitzer do mix.
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