Abstract
This paper is an analysis of the Santo Niño de Cebu, a statue of the child Jesus that is the object of widespread popular devotion among Roman Catholics in the Philippines. The central hypothesis is that a continuing challenge of Roman Catholicism in the Philippines, at least from the perspective of the institutional Church, lies not in the extra liturgical performance of its rituals, but rather in the popular belief that sacred objects possess agency and personhood. The discussion of this theme unfolds over three analytical movements. The focus of the initial section is on the historical context in which the Santo Niño became established as the preeminent religious and cultural icon of the Philippines, going as far back as the sixteenth century. The discussion shifts to the topic of the agency of material objects, as cultivated in the performance of three embodied rituals conducted by thousands of Santo Niño devotees. A third analytical movement is the examination of how popular belief in the Santo Niño’s agency intersects with the institutional reforms of the Second Vatican Council, particularly as locally contextualized and enacted in the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) in 1991.
Highlights
The oldest Christian artifact in the Philippines is a small statuette of the Child Jesus prominently displayed in a Basilica that had been consecrated by Pope Paul VI as the “mother church of Catholic churches in the Philippines” (Paul 1965)
In 2021, Filipinos commemorate the fifth centenary of the arrival of Roman Catholicism in the country
Prominent in the commemoration has been an emphasis on the triumph of evangelization and popular piety—a triumph formally extolled in Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) as the fostering of “a truly Filipino Church’
Summary
The oldest Christian artifact in the Philippines is a small statuette of the Child Jesus prominently displayed in a Basilica that had been consecrated by Pope Paul VI as the “mother church of Catholic churches in the Philippines” (Paul 1965). In this paper I discuss the Santo Niño as the focal point and catalyst of Roman Catholic popular piety in the Philippines. Drawing from debates in anthropology and sociology, scholars of contemporary religion in the Philippines have observed and analyzed agency as a defining feature of ‘lived’ or ‘vernacular’ Roman Catholicism in the country (Wiegele 2005; Sapitula 2013; Tremlett 2014) It is from this latter discourse, correlated with the discussion conducted by sociologists. Roman Catholic popular piety, lived religion and agency takes an intriguing turn: does a sacred object, those that depict God, act autonomously to benefit others?. I address this theme in the second section where I consider how the agency of sacred objects is central to the lived reality of Filipino Roman Catholic popular piety. I would argue that what renders popular piety problematic is not the extra liturgical nature of its expression, but rather the prevalent belief that sacred objects have the capacity for autonomous agency, which in turn forms the basis for an intersubjective personhood
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