This article was originally published as a chapter in the book, Sinagip sa Baha, My Journey Through the Flood of Merciful Love, by Bishop Benjamin De Jesus Almoneda (Kadena Press, Asia Foundation, Inc., 2017). Bishop Ben was the first alumnus of Ateneo de Naga (Bachelor of Arts, Class 1950) to become a priest (ordained in 1958) and a bishop (consecrated in 1990).
I was about 4 years old when I became aware that my papa had a brother priest. During weekends, I enjoyed being Tiyo Ben’s back rider on his motorbike whenever he celebrated Mass in some parts of Naga City. Many priests in Naga knew me since Tiyo Ben would always introduce me to his circle of friends. Because of my fondness of and admiration for Tiyo Ben, becoming a priest someday was deeply ingrained in me.
I admired everything about my Tiyo Ben: his kindness, zeal for his vocation, and his respect for others regardless of age and position. Aside from his being a priest, I admired him for his skill in arts and music. He designed the coat of arms of a number of bishops and some institutions, like the coat of arms of Bishops Enverga, Balce, Sorra and Varela, the CBCP logo, the former logo of the Holy Rosary Minor Seminary, and the coat of arms of the Daughters of Mary in Naga City, to mention a few.
I knew Tiyo Ben more than I knew my father. I served him more than I could have served my father. Since I was 10, I was already living with Tiyo Ben when he became the parish priest of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Naga City in 1970. At that early age, I could already understand Tiyo Ben’s passion to serve the people. I wanted to emulate him someday. His apostolate of working with the people, though not financially gratifying but edifying to the soul, attracted me more to become a priest someday. I was sure Tiyo Ben had known me more than my father did since I spent more years with him than with my father.
Sometime during my elementary years, I remember telling someone, “I have never heard of any bad reputation about Tiyo Ben” and I kept repeating the same statement until I went to college and that remains a truth until today. When I entered the minor seminary, and when given the opportunity, I would say, “I am not ashamed to say that even if Tiyo Ben is my blood relative, my father’s brother, an uncle for that matter, he is the model priest that I admire and I would like to be a priest like him.” Although I did not become a priest, what matters is not what I want but what God wants me to be. Tiyo Ben played a major role in shaping me into what I am today. With the grace of God, I am now a fulfilled husband and father of five children and have a Doctor of Philosophy in Theology.
My father died a month before my graduation in high school in 1977. Right after graduation in high school, I worked with Tiyo Ben. He was then the secretary of the ECERI (Episcopal Commission on Education and Religious Instruction) of the CBCP. It was there that I first met Ms. Nilda Rosas who was introduced to me by Tiyo Ben, as a “madre.” I was startled because she was not wearing a habit.
We had a leftover sandwich for dinner that night, and the first question he asked me was, “Marunong ka na bang magdasal?” (Do you already know how to pray?) I answered promptly, “Opo, marunong na ako.” (Yes, I already know how.) And he said: “Mabuti ka pa marunong na, ako nga nag- aaral pa lang”. (You are better-off, you already know how to pray, while me, I’m still learning how to pray.) His question surprised me because during my four years at the seminary, we prayed everyday from morning till night. And here I was being asked if I knew how to pray by my uncle priest, a monsignor, who ironically was still learning how to pray?
After washing the dishes, without a word, I saw Tiyo Ben enter the prayer room where there was a tabernacle. I followed him. He knelt down and I did, too. I thought we would be praying the rosary or any vocal prayer, but he just remained quietly kneeling down, I also knelt down. After a while, he sat down quietly, and I remained kneeling thinking that it was better for me to kneel longer than him. After a while, he knelt down again and I was still kneeling down, then he stood up and went out of the prayer room. I was left inside the prayer room kneeling then went out after a few minutes.
It was a weekend the following day, and Tiyo Ben drove to Novaliches (the Notre Dame de Vie mother house) and I tagged along. I thought that there were several maids in that house, and it was only after some time that I realized that they were also “madres” like Ms. Rosas. This was my baptism into the NDV family. I joined all their schedules and activities during the entire summer. I had two hours of silent prayer every day and chanted the office with the NDV’s and listened to the SIS (Summer Institute of Spirituality) conferences.
It was only here that I learned that Tiyo Ben became the first Notre Dame de Vie priest in Asia. I described that summer, as my “heaven” experience where I never committed any kind of sin as far as I am concerned. I observed that the NDV members genuinely cared for one another, and I saw what a perfect religious community looked like. I was slowly learning how to pray also.
After that summer, I enrolled at San Jose Seminary in Ateneo de Manila. Before finishing my first year in college, I got sick and had to return to Naga. Everything happened not by chance indeed. A few months after I returned to Naga, Tiyo Ben became the rector of the San Francisco Church. Although San Francisco Church was not a parish, it functioned like a parish because Tiyo Ben wanted to do more than just being a rector of the shrine. We started mobilizing the youth, created a prayer group in every zone of the Barangay, celebrated Barangay Zone Masses and improved the liturgies especially for Easter and Christmas and for the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. The Mass in Tagalog was added in the schedule of Sunday Masses to cater to Tagalog-speaking Bicolanos, especially the businessmen in the city who migrated from the Tagalog regions. Today, San Francisco is already a Parish Church located right in downtown Naga City.
Tiyo Ben was also instrumental in rebuilding San Francisco Church which was a dark place and almost dilapidated during that time. It was Tiyo Ben’s idea to leave a permanent mark by mounting a huge rock that served as an altar in the Church. This rock was brought to Naga from the slopes of Mayon Volcano in Albay through the benevolence of Engr. Rocamora (+). It took weeks to manually chisel the top of the rock to level it up as an altar, and many chisels were broken while hands were calloused and lacerated as well. It took two whole days and nights to bring the rock on to the sanctuary where it stands now.
It was in San Francisco Church also where I met my wife, whom I’m sure was another reason why God created me.
Aside from being the rector of San Francisco Church, Tiyo Ben, during that time, saved the local Church of Caceres from being stripped of a few Church properties around the San Francisco vicinity. He also saved the Church from being dangerously compromised by Abba Holdings Corporation, a group which pretended to be Church supporters, hiding under the guise of the Cursillo Movement. It was also in San Francisco Church where the first Neo-Catechumenate movement in the Archdiocese of Caceres was created at that time through a seeding made by the late Bishop of Legazpi, Most Rev. Teotimo C. Pacis, C.M., D.D.
After San Francisco, Tiyo Ben was assigned parish priest at the St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Iriga City. I joined him there after my graduation in college. We made sure that all the barangays in Iriga were properly coordinated through the barangay officials for the catechetical program which Tiyo Ben designed with the assistance of NDV. I personally reached almost all the barangays of Iriga City using Tiyo Ben’s motorcycle to distribute letters. It was the Sunday collections in the Church which financially sustained the program. Many young people volunteered as catechists during that time and some of them are professional catechists now, some became priests or nuns. Two of these volunteer catechists are worth singling out: Nestor Dacara, who was tortured and murdered by the NPA’s (August 13, 1987) when he was organizing people into a Basic Ecclesial Community; and Jessie Palileo, who was stabbed to death 34 times by a drug addict he was helping to rehabilitate.
Tiyo Ben was also instrumental in patching up existing animosities among prominent people during his pastorship. Aside from “saving” souls, Tiyo Ben built a new rectory for the Parish of St. Anthony de Padua, which he never used except for one night before he left for his next assignment in Rome, Italy, as Rector of Collegio Filippino.
There were many good things that I heard about Tiyo Ben from my family, my relatives and from others. A few negative things they said about Tiyo Ben were: He was too kind, he was prone to be abused by others; he was too trusting, he got easily swindled; he is was too forgiving, he tended to be betrayed more than once; he was too generous, nothing was left of him. But all this, I think, are not really negative attributes of Tiyo Ben. Rather, they are Tiyo Ben’s “elevators” which make God’s mercy rebound upon him.
More About Bishop Ben by the Editors:
Bishop Emeritus Benjamin Almoneda of the Diocese of Daet in Camarines Norte (born April 11, 1930) died on January 6, 2023, the day would have been the 33rd anniversary of his ordination to the episcopate. He was 92.
Bishop Ben had many firsts in his life. He was the first alumnus of the Ateneo de Naga to become a priest and a bishop. He was the first priest from Asia to become a member of the Notre Dame de Vie Institute (NDV) and later, the first member of NDV to become a bishop.
Ordained a priest in 1958, he served as spiritual director, rector, and parish priest in various institutions in the Archdiocese of Caceres. He was appointed Secretary General of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in 1974. After a Year of Solitude in the Notre Dame de Vie Institute in Venasque, France, he became a priest of NDV in 1976. Notre Dame de Vie Institute is a secular institute consisting of three branches: consecrated lay women, lay men and priests.
In the 1980s, he then served as rector of the Pontificio Collegio Filippino in Rome. In December 1989, He was appointed as auxiliary bishop of Daet and was ordained to the episcopate by St. John Paul II on Jan. 6, 1990. More than a year later, he was named bishop of the same diocese, a post he served until Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation and retirement in April 2007. That year he was appointed Spiritual Director of Redemptoris Mater Seminary in Parañaque, which is run by the Neocatechumenal Way community. Concurrently, he also served the NDV community located in Encanto, Angat, Bulacan.
When Bishop Ben entered Eternal Life, he was surrounded by the love and prayers of so many people he had accompanied during his blessed life – catechists, seminarians, priests and religious sisters.
The header is a collage of photos, Bishop Ben at a church service with a view of the chapel of the Notre Dame de Vie in Bulacan. All featured photos courtesy of Bishop Ben’s FB page.
About the author
RAMON “RAMGIE” L. ALMONEDA is with the College of Law faculty of the Ateneo de Naga University, where he teaches Social Justice: Catholic Social Teachings of the Church 1 & 2; part-time faculty of the AdeNU Graduate School for M.A. Religious Education course; concurrently faculty of the Loyola School of Theology in Ateneo de Manila University. Previously, he was full-time teacher in Theology of the College of Arts and Sciences in Ateneo de Naga University; Chairman of the Theology Department 2017-2020. He graduated from University of Nueva Caceres with a degree in Economics and earned his master’s degree in theological studies from Ateneo de Manila University.