Quoting American poet, orator and Catholic priest Abram Joseph Ryan, our tour guide pointed the significance of Corregidor as an “island-striving-in-ruins.“ He proclaimed in jest “a land without ruins is a land without memories – a land without memories is a land without history.” In relation to the quote, the tour guide also explained that…
Category: UNESCO WHS Tentative List
Corregidor Island: Performance, Cultural Memory, and Heritage (Part 1)
Early this year, I saw an announcement on social media that the Corregidor Island and the other surrounding fortifications along Manila Bay are collectively identified as a potential World Heritage Site (WHS): Corregidor Island and Historic Fortifications of Manila Bay. Interestingly, a few years back, I was wondering why Corregidor was not even considered as…
En Route Jerusalem: Caesarea and Ein Karem
Each time I hear the name of the infamous Herod, the Great, two things come to mind. First, his obsession with everything grand and lavish. Second, the Andrew Loyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar’s (JCS) wackiest musical number in syncopated rhythm or the ragtime style. In JCS, the musical captured Herod’s…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Nazareth
Why Nazareth is important to Christian / Catholic pilgrims today? Nazareth is described in the Gospel of Luke as a town in Galilee and the hometown of Mary, mother of Jesus. Although it was not explicitly mentioned in the same Gospel that Joseph was from Nazareth, it can be inferred that it was also his…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Kanna / Cana
Kaf’r Kanna, popular in the modern version of the Scriptures as Cana is a small Galilean town in the Northern District of Israel. Christians and Catholic pilgrims and devotees associate this modern village of Cana as the site where Jesus turned water into wine. In the Christian tradition, this is the first miracle that Jesus…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tabor Mountain
The fourth day is a continuation of the journeys of Jesus and the Apostles in North Israel. This time, there is a focus on the presence and role of Mary, Jesus’ mother in Jesus’s life and ministry. To reiterate, the sites that we visited on Day 4 were collectively part of Israel’s The Galilee Journeys…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tiberias (Part 2 of 2)
The next stop was Capernaum – it’s another personal favorite. It has almost the same features of the Felix Romuliana, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the Zamzigrad region in Serbia, which I visited in 2018. And to date, Romuliana is one of my favorite UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Of course, Capernaum and Romuliana…
Walking the Galilee Journeys of Jesus and His Apostles: Tiberias (Part 1 of 2)
We were told that we would spend at least two hours in the Allenby (Palestine) – King Hussein (Jordan) border before finally having our passports stamped by the immigration officers and enter Palestine, the gateway to Israel via Jordan. By 10 AM, we already crossed the King Hussein Bridge and we were already lined up…
Tanghal Kultura 