The Lindogon exposé should be looked into

The exposé of a former religious brother, Frater Paul Venancio Cabillon, on the alleged scandals involving the Blue Brothers in Lindogon, Simala, may have been taken by the church authorities in Cebu with a grain of salt, to use a cliché. But the accusations, sexual perversions and money-making operations, are serious ones, hence, these should be investigated if only to protect the thousands of Catholic faithfuls who visit that Marian shrine from time to time.

What kind of characters are the so-called "Blue Monks" who have brought about the Lindogon phenomenon? The talk is that they are from Pampanga and came to Cebu allegedly following a discerned message from the Virgin Mary to have a shrine put up for her in this province. But nobody among local religious authorities must have conducted a background check on these people. Since they declared themselves as worshippers of the Mother of God, why, of course, welcome to Cebu!

And so, they founded the Lindogon sanctuary starting with a make-shift chapel and a few light structures, then expanding these within just a few years into a complex of concrete buildings consisting of an impressively designed church, an adoration chapel and permanent quarters for themselves.

At first only the rustics in the barangay patronized the prayer place. They came to say the Rosary with the brothers whose deep spirituality and sobriety seemed to be proclaimed by their light blue habit and hooded visage. Then the miracles started to happen, so it was told. Some paraplegics got "healed", as evidenced by abandoned crutches which the monks openly displayed perhaps to attract more visitors. And so the visitors came, at first in trickles but later in streams of devotees, particularly on Sundays and the feast day, September 8. What magic draws the crowd to that once God-forsaken backwoods of Simala? The miracles, of course. For healings have indeed been reported. From serious ailments to light afflictions - some pilgrims must have pleased the Mother of God because favors were granted, if not in terms of physical well-being in terms of peace of mind and acceptance of God's will. I said some pilgrims because there have been many who came down from that mountain sanctuary with no gains at all either in health and or in spirit. Yet such is the ways of God - not all our desires get granted, not all our wishes get realized, for the Father knows what's good for us.

The faithfuls of course understand this, so they continue to come in an ever growing number, no doubt to the delight of the monks whose entrepreneurial spirit must have been awakened by the popular acceptance of their handiwork. Thus candles and bottled oils, rosary beads and portraits of saints and that of the Virgin Mary - these fetch in hefty sums even as donation boxes continue to bulged with coins and paper bills.

Even without that Cabillon exposé the monks' commercial ventures in Lindogon have already been very conspicuous. Add for their bounty the flow of funds from moneyed families here and in other parts of the country and you understand how the shrine operators were able to stash millions in banks, millions which could have been rightly spent on pro-poor projects for impoverished mountain folks.

But the monks seem have other things in mind. With the church completed, thanks to generous donors from Cebu's affluent Catholics, they have put up a multi-storey concrete edifice right beside that prayer structure. It's a towering building and one looking at it cannot help but wonder if the monks have not blundered into a venture alien to their Marian devotion, for the Mother of God loves simplicity in worship and sincerity in serving the less fortunate in life, not a state of the art secular complex.

That's why there is a need to conduct an in-depth inquiry on the activities of these religious brothers, for one other reason: To protect the sanctity of the devotion to the Virgin Mary and uphold one major aspect of the Catholic faith. A corollary reason could be to measure the sincerity or lack of it of the shrine managers in their supposed endeavor to promote the devotion to the Mother of God, a devotion which should inevitably draw one closer to her son, Jesus Christ.

What has been observed by many is that the scramble to honor the Mother of God has resulted in setting aside the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. When we were there, for example, we saw a long line of people moving towards the Virgin's icon even while the Holy Eucharist was being celebrated. What an irony, Jesus who was present in the altar, body and spirit and full divinity, was being bypassed by the faithfuls as they strove to touch a mere wooden icon, even if it represents the Son of Man's own Blessed Mother!

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