Anything Under the Sun
Molo Church
The ancient and beautiful Molo Church of Santa Ana will once again be the center of the celebration of the fiesta of the District of Molo, Iloilo City on July 26. On this day, thousands of the devotees of Santa Ana from all over the country will troop to it.
The church is beautiful from both the outside and the inside. Gothic style, it majestically lords it over the plaza with its massive corral rocks.
"La iglesia bonita" exclaimed Dr. Jose P. Rizal when he saw the Church of Molo in 1896. He was on his way back to Manila from his exile in Dapitan when he dropped at Iloilo to visit his friend Raymundo Melliza.
In the inside are two rows of Greek columns lined from rear to front to which are attached life-statues of female saints -- Sts. Marcela, Apolonia, Genoveva, Isabel de Ungria, Monica, Felicia, Ines, Maria Magdalena, Juliana, Lucia, Rosa de Lima, Teresita, Clara, Cecilia, Margarita and Marta.
At the ceiling above the main altar is mural of the Pentecost described by Rizal as of Van Gogh style painted by Mariano Mabunay and Jesus Hervias -- unschooled local painters. There are also paintings of the four evangelists -- Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John.
Recently added on the side of the main altars are murals of the Resurrection and the Crucifixion and of the Samaritan woman at the well and the Triumphal entry of Jesus in Jerusalem and two archangels San Miguel and San Rafael on both sides of the entrance wall.
At its facade, is a stained-glass icon of Santa Ana with the Blessed Virgin Mary -- a copy from the famous St. Anne Cathedral in Bepreau, Canada.
The most prominent Gothic feature of the church are its two towers. The others are: its main altar retablo, four side altars, two pulpits, the canopies of the sixteen female saints and even its confessionals.
On July 26, 1977, the church was dedicated to Santa Ana, Mother of the Virgin Mary by Archbishop Alberto J. Piamonte. It is one of the few dedicated churches in Iloilo. The marks of the dedications are 12 white small crosses nailed on the inside walls of the church.
During the war, the towers of the Gothic Molo church were suspected by the Americans to be Japanese machine gun nests. Their artillery at Arevalo plaza shelled the church and one of the towers was hit sending the bells crashing down to the ground. This ended 70 years of the bells' daily service to the Catholic faithful of Molo.
These bells were mounted on the towers in the 1870's. There were more than thirty of them in different sizes ranging from the little hand bells (campanilla) to the bigger ones (campana) producing different sounds which blended together into pleasant musical sound when rung.