via various sources, 24-26 February 2024: Cebu Congressman Edsel Galeos has filed a bill urging the return of four pulpit panels, originally from Boljoon’s Archdiocesan Shrine of Patrocinio de Maria Santissima, to their rightful home. The bill, invoking the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009, aims to address the cultural and historical significance of these artifacts to Boljoon and its community, highlighting the need for their repatriation to preserve local heritage and religious traditions.
Cebu Congressman Edsel Galeos has filed a bill at the House of Representatives urging the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts and the National Museum of the Philippines to return to Boljoon town four pulpit panels that were donated to the museum.
Galeos is representative of Cebu’s Second District where Boljoon is situated.
His bill came after the municipality asked NMP to open an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the panels finding their way to the museum many years after they were reportedly stolen from the church in Boljoon in the 1980s.
In the bill, Galeos cited Republic Act 10066 or the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009, which states that one of the objectives of the law is to “protect, preserve, conserve, and promote the nation’s cultural heritage, its property and histories, and the ethnicity of local communities.”
See:
- Pulpit panels issue reaches Congress as solon calls for return | GMA, 26 Feb 2024
- Calls to return Boljoon panels reach House | Cebu Daily News, 26 Feb 2024
- Missing pulpit panels from Cebu church resurface at the National Museum after over 40 years | GMA, 25 Feb 2024
- No, no, no, National Museum! The Boljoon artifacts do not belong to you! | Rappler, 25 Feb 2024
- ‘Dynamic ownership’ and the moral and legal controversy over Boljoon’s heritage panels | The Freeman, 24 Feb 2024
- Boljoon seeks probe into pulpit panels | GMA, 24 Feb 2024
- Explainer: What we know so far on Boljoon’s once-lost pulpit panels | Cebu Daily News, 22 Feb 2024
