4 pulpit panels ‘come home’ to church in Boljoon, Cebu

After over three decades, four pulpit panels that went missing but resurfaced in 2024 in an exhibit, have been repatriated to Cebu and returned to a church in Boljoon town, south Cebu Province.

The four pulpit panels, that resurfaced in an exhibit of the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) in 2024, have "come home" finally morning on Friday, March 14, 2025 much to the delight of residents. 

Parishioners have welcomed warmly the return of the religious panels to the Archdiocesan Shrine of Patrocinio de Maria Santisima, otherwise known as the Boljoon Church.

A convoy from Cebu City transported the pulpit panels to Boljoon; afterwhich, a procession to the altar followed.

After members of the clergy received the pulpit panels, a Holy Mass was officiated by Monsignor Arthur Navales, team moderator of the Archdiocesan Shrine of Patrocinio de Maria Santisima.

In an interview with GMA Regional TV Balitang Bisdak, Fr. Brian Brigoli, chairman of the Cebu Archdiocese Commission of the Cultural Heritage of the Church, said that the panels will be put up on March 19 to March 20, 2025.

A Thanksgiving Mass and unveiling of the installed pulpit panels is set on March 21, 2025.

Meanwhile, it was learned from Atty. Maria Cecilia Tirol, director for the Visayas of the National Museum of the Philippines (NMP), that after the turnover ceremony of the panels, it is now the responsibility of the parish and the church to ensure preservation of the panels deemed part of a National Cultural Treasure.

Boljoon Church has been declared a National Historical Landmark by the National Historical Institute in 1999, and included in the list of NMP in 2001 as a National Cultural Treasure.

Tirol added that NMP spent half-a-million pesos for the restoration of the four pulpit panels. — via Albert Aballe, Nikko Sereno/GMA Regional TV Balitang Bisdak