Casa de Silencio Retirement Home Project Launched
Last October 17, at the 69th birthday birthday of the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cubao, Bishop Honesto F. Ongtioco DD, the Cubao clergy announced its most ambitious project infrastructure project yet, a retirement home for sick and retired priests cum retreat and conference center. Prior to this, the biggest project yet was the ‘Pabahay’ project for diocesan staff in Antipolo. The renewal center had been ‘baptized’ as Casa de Silencio, named after one of the streets near Araneta Avenue where the retirement home would rise, next to the Holy Redeemer Parish Church.
Invited to Bishop Ness Ongtioco’s birthday dinner at the Obispado in Lantana, Cubao were representatives of the Parish Pastoral Councils from the 47 different parishes making up the diocese. The Christ the King Parish Greenmeadows PPC was complete, with Bert and Marie Anne Santos, Henry and Joyce Tanedo, David and Fely Ong, and Bing and Elise del Rosario in attendance, together with Fr. Bong Tupino and the other CTK priests.
Although it wouldn’t be formally launched in the diocese until the First Sunday of Advent, the ‘hat’ was informally passed around, resulting in an unexpected contribution total of nearly P800,000.
A month earlier, Fr. Bong Tupino met with the CTK PPC officers and asked if the team was willing to take on the additional assignment of Ways and Means Committee, reporting to him in his designated role as Ways and Means Committee Head for the retirement home project. The PPC officers said ‘yes’. So the following week, on September 27, the CTK PPC officers, together with additional member Fe Pery, convened officially, with members of the Cubao Diocese curia – Fr. Jun Simon, Chancellor; Fr. Steve Zabala, vice-chancellor; and Fr. Ronnie Santos, Oeconomus. At the meeting, Fr. Steve ran them through the details of the project. Based on the discussion, the CTK PPC officers prepared a draft plan of action that was discussed at a second meeting two weeks later. They also prepared a draft PowerPoint presentation that would be used by Fr. Bong Tupino and Fr. Steve Zabala as they made the rounds of the 3rd quarter vicariate leadership meetings. Finally, on November 27, two of the CTK PPC members presented to the Cubao clergy at-large during their Advent recollection in Tagaytay and got their approval to formally launch on the first weekend of Advent, December 2-3.
This meant that the CTK PPC had to rush the design of special envelopes, posters, and custom-designed collection boxes that were shipped out to the different parishes last December 1 and 2. On the diocese side, Fr. Steve Zabala was entrusted with getting Bishop Ongtioco to prepare a video so that the parish mass presiders would not need to talk too long on the project but more to underline how important the project was and how critical would be the support from the parishioners.
So starting with the December 2 Saturday masses, the presiding priests of these masses in the 47 different parishes made the same appeal – with the average age of Cubao priests at 52, these priests are going to be hitting retirement age soon, and some will need to retire even sooner as cancer, sickness, dementia, mobility issues and other issues arise. But as a parish priest retires, he has to leave the parish rectory where he may have resided for many years, if not decades. That’s to make room for the new incoming parish priest. But since the Cubao diocese has no official retirement home, retired parish priests who have spent several decades living in their parish rectory have no choice but to look for rectory bed space in other pari shes, or rent an expensive apartment, which is often beyond their means, or try very hard to look for relatives who will shelter them during their remaining years. And as everybody knows, priests have no children to turn to, which is the usual alternative of the very elderly. Priests in their 70s and 80s need a home to retire to, where they have the companionship in their aging years of fellow apostles of the faith, and where the severely ill or incapacitated can reside in quiet dignity.
As currently designed, there will be 20 rooms for retired priests, with most of them opening into the garden area on one side, and the main dining hall on another side. A nurses’ station and a medical ward is also part of the design for sick or terminally ill priests. And most importantly, the main building leads to the chapel that can accommodate as many as 100 massgoers.
The upkeep for any retirement facility will be costly. So the plan is to build a retreat and conference center around the retirement home. In this way, the center can earn revenues that could help defray the regular operating cost of meals, utilities, repair and maintenance of the facility, and salaries of nursing, physical therapy, kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance, drivers and grounds staff. Retired priests will also be charged a portion of their meager monthly pension for rent and upkeep. As a renewal center, the facility will also offer spiritual growth, healing and transformation by offering daily and Sunday Masses; spiritual retreat s ; meeting and conference space for clergy, congregations, parochial school faculty, and parish staff; and availability of very senior priests for confession, counseling, and fellowship.
For the ‘renewal’ part of Casa de Silencio, there will also be 50 smaller rooms on the upper Zloors for overnight retreat participants, plus two small meeting rooms and one mid-sized conference room good for 50 participants.
It’s a very ambitious project, with a lot of opportunities to fail, given the high cost (some estimates go as high as P200M). But the CTK Parish Pastoral Council is guardedly optimistic that if everyone in the diocese who can afford to give does give, there’s a fighting chance that the donation targets can be achieved. The near-term fighting goal is to get to P30M so as to allow breaking ground on the project by end March 2018, and to get to P200M by late-2019 when the building could possibly be completed.
Fr. Bong Tupino and the CTK PPC echo the words of Bishop Ness Ongtioco in the video when he said, ‘I hope you can join us in this truly worthwhile endeavor.’
