EDITORIAL - Just a delay, or something else?

The mess involving the pulpit panels stolen in the late 1980’s from the Patrocinio de Maria Santisima Parish Church in Boljoon town, Cebu, seems to have been settled after the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) said October of last year that they will return the panels to the church.

But as it stands right now the panels are still not in the hands of the Cebu Archdiocese. And now Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia wants to sit down with Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma to discuss what actions to take next, perhaps even legal actions.

“We will call that meeting with the archdiocese. I hope Archbishop Palma will be available. I’d like to hear it directly from him,” the governor said in a story that came out in this newspaper.

We hope that the NMP is just facing a bit of delay in their restoration of the pulpit panels --something that they had said would take 12 weeks and cost ?30 million-- and that they aren’t having a change of heart in turning these over but just don’t have the heart to say it.

We would like to see an end to this sorry episode, preferably the promised ending where the panels will be returned to Cebu with great fanfare. This certainly will not happen if the NMP changes its mind on the issue.

But then again we have yet to hear the side of the NMP regarding this, so it wouldn’t be fair to say anything derogatory about them until they respond to this latest development.

However, if indeed the NMP is indeed hemming and hawing in hopes of making this issue go away or get forgotten, this doesn’t bode well for those who lost what was rightfully theirs to thieves and plunderers and are only looking to get them back.