| International News

During Holy Week, more than 1,000 people flocked to Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto and Church in Bulacan province's San Jose del Monte City, 95 kilometers (about 60 miles) northeast of Manila.

Some prayed in front of the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes and others queued at a pool to collect "holy" water believed to cure ailments. The water is piped in from a natural spring.

On April 4, a group of women in white sang the Latin hymn “Tantum Ergo,” which is usually sung during adoration of the blessed sacrament. They knelt before the Marian statue and prayed, carrying items they said they use for healing.

One woman uses the "cane of Saint Joseph" to "strike out sickness and temptation." Another claimed her "rope of unity" helps settle quarrels. The residents from Bai, just south of Manila, told a television reporter that they go to the grotto every Wednesday during Holy Week to pray for the renewal of their gift of healing and to get healing water from the spring.

The grotto, built on a 30-hectare lot in Gaya-Gaya Village, was inspired by the famous grotto in Lourdes, France, where the mother of Philippine grotto owner Marietta Guanzon-Holmgren went for healing of cancer of the uterus in 1961. The grotto and an unfinished church, inaugurated in 1965, are now owned and administered by the Holmgren family.

Since the 1960s, it has attracted sick people from around the country, some of whom have donated their crutches, wheelchairs, artificial limbs and other aids after they were reportedly cured. Grotto caretaker Ponciano Sevilla told UCA News that in 1975, there were so many walking aids left at the shrine that they were donated to the Philippine Orthopedic Hospital, northeast of Manila. According to Sevilla, outside the Lenten season, crowds at the shrine are smaller.

In 2004 Holmgren asked Malolos Diocese for personnel to supervise religious activities at the grotto.

Father Rolando de Leon, vicar forane of the southeast area of the diocese, said two priests and a nun were assigned to administer the grotto, but they left one after another. They reported Holmgren was "meddling" too much in their duties and treating them like "paid employees," Father de Leon told UCA News.

He said that in 2005, when the owner did not follow Roman Catholic guidelines on liturgy and worship, Bishop Jose Oliveros of Malolos issued a circular instructing priests to "stop recognizing the grotto church as a Roman Catholic institution." The bishop ordered priests to stop leading religious activities there, Father de Leon added.

Holmgren then invited priests from other denominations and Catholic priests "with bad records" to say Mass and officiate in religious rites at the grotto, Father de Leon said.

When the bishop found out, priests were asked to announce his instruction at Masses and to advise parishioners to stop going to the grotto and church, Father de Leon said.

The priest stressed, however, that the church does not "force" parishioners to stop going to the private grotto or its church. "What we want them to know is that we do not encourage them and that they should know that such a place is no longer a Roman Catholic institution," Father de Leon said.

Those who come are firm believers in the grotto's "miraculous" power to heal.

Maria Ospelo, 42, has been visiting the grotto for 15 years, after she conceive two children despite physicians telling her there was only a "slim" chance for pregnancy.

Teresita Boada, 75, a sweets-shop owner, continues her devotion and "pilgrimage" because her late sister, who visited the spring, lived eight more years after doctors gave her only months to live.

Local businesswoman Sally Montehermoso, however, heeds the diocese's warning and discourages friends from visiting the grotto.

Catechist Daisy San Gabriel-Santos urges people to "respect the decision of the diocese." She said people go to the grotto believing it is "miraculous," but also called on the owner to "strengthen" her faith.

Bulacan province, along with Valenzuela town, in Metro Manila, comprises the Diocese of Malolos, where 85 percent of the 3,120,700 people are Catholics.