Remembering Father Burgos

February is also associated with Father Jose Apolonio Burgos, one of the martyred priests of the famous GOMBURZA (Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora).

Burgos was known for his kindness and love of peace among his parishioners that earned the respect of the people. This is what one can gather from the pages of Gregorio Zaide’s ‘Great Filipinos in History.’

February is Burgos month, too, as it is in this part of the year when the three most important days of Burgos’ life took place.

Son of Lieutenant Jose Burgos, a Spanish officer in the Ilocos militia, and Florencia Garcia, an Ilocana, Burgos was born in Vigan on February 9, 1837. On February 11, 1855 he was ordained priest after getting his Bachelor of Arts degree with the highest honors from the College of San Juan de Letran. On February 17, 1872 he was executed at Bagumbayan, Manila.

Burgos was nationally famous because of his winning ways in helping the government settle dispute in the agrarian revolt in 1828, and in 1869. When he became the parish priest of Bacoor, Cavite after his ordination as priest on February 11, 1855, he helped improve the town streets, agriculture, home industries and in the solving of quarrels among residents using friendly ways.

Although his hometown Vigan has not set any activity to celebrate his birth or remember his death this year or the past years, residents, and those who love to preserve the country’s culture and heritage, must help push ways to do so.

Jose Rizal, the country’s national hero, wrote his second novel, “El Filibusterismo,” inspired by Burgos. He was only 11 years old when Burgos, 30, a friend of his older brother Paciano, was executed with Fathers Gomez and Zamora, both 85, in Bagumbayan, Manila.

Burgos, the night before his death, wrote his last message to the Filipino youth – “Get educated. Use the schools of our country for as much as they can give. Learn from our older men what they know. Then go abroad. If you can do no better, study in Spain, but preferably, study in the freer countries.

“Read what foreigners have written about the Philippines for their writings have not been censored. See in the museums of other lands what the ancient Filipinos really were. Be a Filipino always but an educated Filipino.

Burgos was wrongly punished for something he did not do because he was implicated by his enemies in the Cavite Revolt, which was not a revolt but a mutiny of Filipino workers at the Cavite arsenal because of the abolition of their privileges. Burgos was famous, however, for championing the Filipino secular clergy to administer parishes in the country when there was racial prejudice against them.

Burgos, 30, the youngest and most brilliant of the three martyred priests, was orphaned at eight. But received seven degrees with highest honors: Bachelors of Theology, and Canon Law, Licentiates in Philosophy and Letters, Theology, Canon Law; and doctorates in Canon Law and Theology. His intelligence helped him become professor of the University of Santo Tomas and College of San Juan de Letran. (MCA/ICR/PIA1 Ilocos Sur)