Parish takes steps in promotion of ‘sunken’ heritage church
By Ian Ocampo Flora
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
BACOLOR — The San Guillermo Parish here is now taking steps to better promote the “sunken” San Guillermo Parish Church here to bring in more tourists and religious pilgrims to this lahar-ravaged town.
Parish priest Fr. Jess Manabat told Sun.Star Pampanga in a recent interview that the parish is now polishing plans to further improve the tourism and pilgrimage experience here.
“We want to tap into services like food for the tourists, professional tour guides and improvement of the in-house museum and other structures in and around the church,” Manabat said, adding that tourism here is good in projecting that Bacolor residents have a reason to return to their town.
Manabat said the church attracts close to 100 busloads of tourists every six months, and has been a favorite destination of religious pilgrims from the country and even abroad.
Manabat said coordination with other tour destinations in Pampanga and nearby towns is also being studied to further boost the tourism industry here.
The San Guillermo Parish Church, better known to local tourists as the “Sunken Church of Bacolor,” is in fact now a tourist attraction, drawing busloads of tourists each year.
Despite the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which half-buried the church and erased its rich architectural designs and the massive “retablos” that depict advanced stages of baroque and rococo, the church is still being used for church service and has been a constant reminder of the devastation Pinatubo had brought Pampanga.
The church also achieved pop-culture popularity as one of the location venues for ABS-CBN’s primetime show “May Bukas Pa”.
Aside from the church, the town itself is of equal historical importance as during the British Occupation of the Philippines as it became the capital of the exiled government of Governor General Simón de Anda y Salazar from 1762 to 1764.
It was the former capital town of Pampanga until the provincial seat of government was transferred to neighboring San Fernando in 1904.
Aside from the plans of the local parish, Representative Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2nd District, Pampanga) also eyed this place as part of the tour circuit program for churches here.
Published in the Sun.Star Pampanga newspaper on August 16, 2011.
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