Recollections of full years

by Helen Herron Taft

Universal agitation, uneasiness, fear, hatred, a memory of wrongs too recently resented and resented at too great a cost; these were the factors which made necessary the stand which the Commission finally adopted. The question with the Friars became one, largely, of getting value for their property, their title to which was never seriously disputed, and it was decided that on condition of their leaving the Islands, the insular government would undertake the purchase of their vast estates. The intention was then to make some arrangement whereby the lands might be sold back to the people in homestead tracts, and on terms which the poorest man might be able, in time, to meet.

It was to negotiate this transaction, involving the expenditure of $7,000,000 that my husband was sent to Rome the following year as an emissary of the United States government to the Vatican. This was in the time of Pope Leo, and it made a most interesting experience which I shall detail in another chapter.

The first thing, really, that the Commission undertook when they arrived in Manila, was the settlement of a definite dispute between the Church and the People as to which had the right to administer the affairs of the Medical College of San José. Their manner of procedure in this case instituted in the Islands a new and never-before-thought-of system of evenly balanced justice, and made a tremendous sensation.

The case was called: “T. H. Pardo de Tavera, and others, for themselves and other inhabitants of the Philippine Islands—against—The Rector of the University of Santo Tomas, a Dominican monk, and the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church, represented by the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of Manila, and the Most Reverend, the Archbishop of New Orleans, Apostolic Delegate.” Its importance, under the conditions then existing, can hardly be exaggerated.

San José was one of the oldest institutions in the Islands; it was founded, as a matter of fact, in 1601, by virtue of a legacy left by a Spanish Provincial Governor named Figueroa who provided that it should always be managed by the head of the Jesuits in the Islands. It was originally a college for the education of Spanish boys, but through various vicissitudes, including the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1766, it had changed from one thing to another until, finally, it had become a college of physicians and pharmacists and was made a department of the University of Santo Tomas, the Rector of which was a Dominican Friar. One of the Philips had granted to the college a Royal charter, and within the last hundred years the Crown had asserted its right of control. So when the American government took over all the public property in the Philippines, General Otis closed San José, but he did not issue an order as to its management. The Church was petitioning for a restitution of what it regarded as its rights in the property, and the Commission was called upon to settle the controversy.

They conducted their examinations in open meetings so that all might see the full and free workings of a wholly equitable system, and the Filipinos were enabled to behold, for the first time, the, to them, astonishing spectacle of high ecclesiastics presenting in open court the arguments upon which they based their claims.

The first hearing Mr. Taft describes as “an historic scene.”

“There were the two Archbishops in their archiepiscopal cassocks,” he writes, “with purple girdles and diamond crosses, accompanied by a Secretary of the Dominican order robed in white; while opposed was a Filipino lawyer, Don Felipe Calderón, who derived his education in the University of Santo Tomas. Accompanying him were a lot of young Filipino students and others of the Medical Association interested in wresting San José from the University. The Archbishop of Manila made a speech in which he was unable to restrain the feeling of evident pain that he had in finding the rights of the Church challenged in this Catholic country. He made a very dignified appearance.”

And at the second hearing:

“Both Archbishops were again present, and the same scene was re-enacted except that we had rather more of a formal hearing. We had them seated on opposite sides of a table, just as we do in court at home, and had seats for the spectators.