By Patrick Downes
Hawaii Catholic Herald
Bishop Alfredo F. Verzosa
A Philippines bishop will be in Hawaii next month to celebrate a Mass to promote the cause of sainthood for Bishop Alfredo F. Verzosa, the first Catholic bishop to hail from the country’s northern Ilocos region where many of Hawaii’s Philippine immigrants have roots.
Archbishop emeritus of Ernesto A. Salgado will celebrate the 5 p.m. Mass on Saturday, Sept. 8, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa.
Born in 1877 in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Bishop Verzosa obtained his theology degree at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines in 1904. He was ordained priest in 1904 and appointed Bishop of Lipa, Philippines, in 1917.
According to a website dedicated to the bishop, he changed the religious, spiritual and moral profile of southern Luzon where Lipa is.
He founded the Missionary Cathechists of the Sacred Heart, a diocesan congregation for women in 1923; was the apostolic administrator of Nueva Segovia from 1926 to 1927; and built churches, convents and schools in his diocese, which he worked to rebuild after the destruction of World War II.
Bishop Verzosa is said to have witnessed the “miracles of the roses” in which the Blessed Mother was reported to have appeared in a Carmelite convent in Lipa in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a vision that was later discounted by the Vatican.
He died in his home city on June 27, 1954.
Archbishop Salgado initiated the cause for beatification and sainthood for Bishop Verzosa in 2013, an effort that was approved by the Vatican resulting in the bishop receiving the title “Servant of God.”
In an email to the Hawaii Catholic Herald, Archbishop Salgado said Bishop Verzosa “deserves to be canonized because of the virtues he practiced during his lifetime, specially patience in the midst of suffering.”
“He will be a good refuge, especially for us Filipinos who suffer much,” the archbishop said.
“We admire his virtue of obedience,” Archbishop Salgado said, recalling his response to the Vatican’s verdict on the alleged apparition of our Blessed Mother, calling it inauthentic.
“From then on he never said a word about the apparitions although it is suspected that he may have believed in it,” he said.
“Obedience,” said Archbishop Salgado.
