By Nj Viehland, Quezon City More than 50 Philippine bishops paid their last respects to Jesuit Bishop Francisco Claver during his funeral Mass in Quezon City July 7. The late bishop was one of Asia’s greatest Church leaders, Oblate Archbishop Orlando Quevedo told the gathering, which included priests, nuns and lay Church workers. He also had a keen eye for detail, seen in his supervision of construction projects inMalaybalay diocese, said Jesuit Father Calvin Poulin in his homily. Father Poulin was the late bishop’s vicar general, secretary and companion during his first assignment as bishop in Malaybalay in the southern Philippines in 1969. Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales of Manila presided over the Mass, held at the Jesuits’ Loyola House of Studies chapel, and concelebrated by Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu and Archbishop Edward Joseph Adams, apostolic nuncio to the Philippines. Bishop Claver was later buried at the Jesuit Sacred Heart Novitiate cemetery in Novaliches, Quezon City. The late prelate was born in Bontoc, Mountain Province, in 1929. He entered the Society of Jesus on May 30, 1948, and was ordained a priest in 1961 after completing theology studies at Woodstock College in Maryland, US. He obtained a master’s degree in anthropology from the Jesuit Ateneo de Manila and later a doctorate in the same field from the University of Colorado. He served as first bishop of Malaybalay from 1969-1984 and bishop of his home vicariate of Bontoc-Lagawe from 1995-2004. In between these assignments and even during them, he taught and wrote articles on social justice and violence. He drafted the 1986 Philippine bishops’ statement believed to have triggered the People Power movement that unseated President Ferdinand Marcos. Bishop Claver died on July 1 from pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lung. He was 81.
Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales of Manila incenses Bishop Francisco Claver’s coffin