Shrine to replace crucifixions as Lenten tourist draw in Pampanga

ANGELES CITY  ,Philippines – The true-to-life crucifixions during Good Fridays here could be overshadowed by the renewed devotion to the miraculous “Apu Macalulu” of the Lord of Mercy Church in Barangay Lourdes Sur.

Thousands trooped to the Lord of Mercy Church yesterday morning to attend a two-hour Mass concelebrated by San Fernando Archbishop Paciano Aniceto and Bishops Virgilio Pablo David and Roberto Mallari as they declared it as a diocesan shrine.

Aniceto, known for his piety and prudence among local Catholics, cited the Apu Macalulu, a 180-year-old statue of Jesus Christ lying in a sepulcher at the shrine’s main altar, as miraculous.

“ The official declaration of the church as a shrine devoted to the Lord of Mercy is expected to put an end to the tumultuous history surrounding the statue,” said local historian Francis Musni.

Aniceto does not agree with crucifixions and other bloody practices in Pampanga during Lenten Season, and encourages practices approved only by the Catholic Church.

This Lenten season, he urged Catholics to renew their devotion to the Lord of Mercy, describing the Shrine in his homily as a “sacred place.”

Musni said the statue was sculpted between 150 to 180 years ago by a certain Buenaventura from Paete, Laguna, as commissioned by Fr. Macario Paras, who was then parish priest of Angeles.

The statue was first installed in a sanctuary located in the vast estate of the Paras and Dayrit families in Lourdes Sur, formerly known as Talimundok.

A record dated Feb. 20, 1865 showed that the Apu Macalulu statue and its carriage were given by Paras to the church in 1872 until it was moved elsewhere for safekeeping in 1896.

Apu Macalulu was brought back to the church in 1904 and was used in processions on Good Fridays and this town’s fiesta in October.

Musni said that in 1928, the Apu Macalulu was snatched during a Good Friday procession by a group headed by then Mayor Juan Nepomuceno amid conflicts with the parish priest on the question of donations.

Church authorities based in Manila brought the issue before the Supreme Court, which ordered that the Apu Macalulu be turned over to Catholic hierarchy in Manila whose jurisdiction covered Pampanga.

“But it took the group of the mayor one year to turn over the statue to Manila. It is said that they had a replica of it made in Paete and that was what they turned over,” Musni said.

Later, however, the replica was returned to Angeles, thus giving the city two statues of Apu Macalulu, one located at the city’s Holy Rosary Parish Church and the other at the shrine in Lourdes Sur.

“It is said that the Apu Macalulu in the shrine is the replica, but then the Apu in Lourdes Sur now has more followers,” he said.

Another controversy erupted in 1985 when then San Fernando Archbishop Oscar Cruz issued a ban on holding religious services at the church in Lourdes Sur due to another conflict on donations.

The ban stayed on for many years until Aniceto lifted the ban two years ago.