Skip to content

April 1, 1945

This martyr city spent the most gloomy but the most hopeful Holy Week in its history. The wounds of its passion and crucifixion are still open and bleeding. But the hope of resurrection hovers over its dead, its wounds and its ruins.

Manila, the city of big churches and convents, has lost many of them. Ten parishes, eight convent temples, not to mention the great number of chapels, bear the mark of the tragedy.

Religious fervor has intensified. The recent experiences have awakened many, and have changed others from good to better. Among the scorched and gaping walls of roofless temples, among rubble and ruins, the faithful congregate and take a more active part in the sacred mysteries, with greater devotion than if they had stood before altars resplendent with lights and ornaments.

The piety, firmness and simplicity of the Catholic American soldiers are a living example. The devotion and frequency with which they receive the Sacraments cannot but impress both their non-Catholic comrades-in-arms as well as the Filipinos who are non-Catholic in practice. A chaplain recounted that he had converted eighty soldiers and that he is giving instruction to twenty-five more.

In the field of combat, there are no atheists.