Fr. Pedro Lamata, parish priest of St. Jude Thadeus Parish with main church along General Malvar St. in Davao City, prayed for the success, safety and good health of Pres. Rodrigo R. Duterte when he celebrated the second midnight mass of the parish church on Friday, December 16.
“Let’s all pray for the success and good health
of our national leaders, specially President Duterte, who is from Davao City,” Fr. Pete said, addressing the parishioners who filled the church to the rafters during that midnight mass.
Some 200 of the parishioners stood outside the church because they could no longer be accommodated inside. St. Jude is one of the city’s three air-conditioned Catholic churches.
Fr. Pete and then Mayor Rody had a running political controversy in the past but they reconciled immediately before the presidential elections.
The priest fell ill sometime before Mayor Rody was proclaimed the 16th President of the Philippines. He said the Holy Mass last Friday dawn in a wheel-chair.
In his homily, Fr. Pete said the nine-day dawn masses was a novena in honor of the Virgin Mother Mary.
In the homily, he also touched on his childhood days in Barangay Bunawan in Davao City where his father was a teniente del barrio and his mother was grade school teacher.
The first misa de gallo in St. Jude Church is at 3:00 a.m. while the second is at 4:30 a.m.
St. Jude is just one of the more than two dozen parish churches in Davao City that celebrate the traditionally jampacked midnight masses in the run-up to Christmas Day on December 25.
