Leona Florentino

 

As I mentioned on my Facebook last year, whenever I travel to the Philippines a few times a year, and whenever I have time, I follow one poet, Leona Florentino,  who died young of tuberculosis in the 19th century.

It all started when I discovered a small church next to the market in the town of Dagupan, where my office is located. There, I met Monsignor Jimmy Espiritu, who served the local people of Dagupan in a pretty modest church, where he has been sleeping on a couch at night instead of a bed in his simple and frugal room.

Then, I found that the church deeply connected with the son of Leona Florentino.

Leona was left behind after she passed from tuberculosis at a young age. Based on her poems, it has been speculated that she might be a lesbian and a pioneer of feminism in the Philippines. But the society of the time did not accept her, and she burned out the flame of life under house arrest.

And her son, Isabelo de los Reyes, one of the founders of this church, introduced her poetry. He threw himself into the Philippine revolutionary movement and continued to work as a writer and journalist despite being imprisoned under Spanish repression. After the Philippines was ceded from Spain to the United States, he continued his activism until he passed away in 1938, just before the Philippines gained sovereignty after World War II.

This church is called the Philippine Independent Church. That church continued its services in Dagupan, with its roof partially broken. Isabelo de los Reyes was a Catholic, but as a Filipino, he was at odds with the papacy in his efforts to establish a Filipino church by abolishing the church system based on European supremacy.

Jimmy told me that in the town of Urdaneta, about 40 minutes drive from my office, there is a library and church that tells the story of his footsteps and is the center of the Philippine Independent Church. So this weekend, I visited there with Jimmy. 

Over there, young people from the Cebu area and Mindanao gathered to study the doctrine while staying in a simple and frugal dormitory.

On a hot and quiet afternoon in central Luzon, I came across a photo of Isabelo de Lo Reyes in his younger days at its library.

The word "independence" can be spelled in English as "detachment from dependence". It means a strong spirit that endures solitude to follow one's path. I could feel the origin of such a human spirit in this simple church.

The photo shows Jimmy (second from the right) with the library staff there and my office partner.

My research will continue.