CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The Most Reverend Cesar Ma. Guerrero, first bishop of both the dioceses of Lingayen and San Fernando is now officially a “Servant of God” after the Holy See granted the request of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan to start the formal process to establish his virtuous life and holiness.
Ordained a priest in Rome in 1914, Guerrero returned to the Philippines to serve as assistant parish priest in Binondo in 1915, and later as chaplain of the Hospicio de San Jose in 1917.
He was appointed first bishop of Lingayen in February 1929, where he planned to establish the seminary subsequently named after Mary, Help of Christians.
Bishop Guerrero was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Manila, receiving the Titular See of Limisa in December 1937. In 1939, he organized the Catholic Action of the Philippines and became its first director.
Accused of collaborating with the Japanese in World War II, he was charged before the People’s Court for treason after the war, but his case was summarily dismissed in 1946, after which he retired to a convent in San Francisco del Monte. On May 14, 1949, Bishop Guerrero was reinstated to become the first prelate of the Diocese of San Fernando, where he propagated the devotion to the Virgen de los Remedios evolving into the Cruzada de Penitencia y Caridad, famously noting “Aqui en la Pampanga hay mucha piedad pero poca caridad (In Pampanga, there is much piety but little charity.)”
On July 4, 1950, Bishop Guerrero established the diocesan Mater Boni Consilii (Mother of Good Counsel) Seminary that has produced bishops of its own including San Fernando Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto, current Archbishop Florentino Lavarias, the later Bishop Victor Ocampo, Bishop Roberto Mallari, and Pablo Virgilio Cardinal David.
He resigned from the See of San Fernando on March 14, 1957 due to poor health but was made an assistant to the papal throne with the rank of papal count. He stayed at the old Hospicio de San Jose where he began his priestly ministry to live a contemplative life with the orphans and the aged.
Presaging his own death, Bishop Guerrero had a tombstone made inscribed with an epitaph — “Caro dabitur vermibus” (the flesh will be given to the worms)—two ays before his fatal heart attack. He sent word to the Carmelite convent in Angeles that he wished to be buried there.
On March 27, 1961, Holy Monday, he died at the age of 76 of a sudden heart attack. His remains were laid in state in his native Ermita Church where Rufino Cardinal Santos sang the Requiem Mass. The next day, the body was transferred to San Fernando where after a morning pontifical requiem Mass at the then-Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption (Metropolitan Cathedral of San Fernando), the faithful “begged to defer the funeral in the afternoon so that more people could pay their last respects to the bishop who left all that he had for the two seminaries in Pangasinan and Pampanga, and for the Carmelite convent in Angeles.”
Bishop Cesar Ma. Guerrero was interred, together with the bones of his mother Aurora, at the Carmelite Monastery grounds in Angeles City. Punto News Team/Fr. Soc FB Page
