0.3 Opus dei book's darkened rizal & Why - chapter 3  (Page 11/21)

Let us revisit too the later-named obtainer of the document in question, Fr. Vicente Balaguer. If he could not have been the obtainer, then the retraction he claimed to have obtained must be a fake one. Recall his being officially and publicly identified not in Manila, where it would have shocked persons who were told distinctly other versions. Recall the anonymous proclamation of his version around mid-January to February 1897, in three biweekly installments of a Jesuit youth newsmagazine in Barcelona. Reissued it was later in the year in the little book subtitled “Rizal y su obra” with the Barcelona Archbishopric’s approval. Many years later that anonymous writer was identified by Retana as the former learned Jesuit Superior Pastells himself! Recall that some years earlier he tried most passionately to win Rizal back to the times’ absolutist Catholicism, in its unity with the Spanish nation-state. Jesuit Bonoan’s mid-1990s book repeatedly in footnotes confirmed Pastells’ authorship of “Rizal y su obra”. It re-echoed the previous anonymous announcement of Balaguer’s belated version, and reproducing it there. And linking Pastells to the mentioned previous anonymous announcement. This rapidly developed into the official Balaguerian position of the Church’s Spanish and Philippine national Catholic Hierarchies. From its context above and its mini-version of the nine-letter Pastells-Rizal debate this late-adopted official version of how, by whom, and when precisely the historic document was obtained deserves to be known too as the Pastells-Balaguer version.

The debate or relatively long intense discussions with the dying heretic took place during the very busy afternoon hours of the “29 ^th ”. But there were long trains of attention-getting and distracting family members, officials, other priests, correspondents who visited and were waiting to visit during the morning, afternoon and evening of the last day. None reported Balaguer being seen to have entered the death cell. The afternoon and evening hours were especially busy ones. It allowed no time for a relatively long and intense exchange of views. Not even the agents and director of the ever-watchful Cuerpo de Vigilancia , the regime’s watchful intelligence unit, which made an official report of events in the death cell, noticed Balaguer’s presence in the death cell. In fact it tellingly named two different Jesuit as obtainers of the finished retraction, which it dated around mid-afternoon of the ‘29 ^th ’, as if they were part of the entire plot. The two main Manila newspapers of December 30, 1896 that published the text of the retraction never mentioned Balaguer. The friar-controlled La Voz Espa ň ola merely reassured the public: “We have seen and read his [Rizal’s] own handwritten retraction which he sent to our dear and venerable Archbishop…” Neither the Jesuit Superior nor the Archbishop mention Balaguer at all at the time. Filipinos would have been shocked if the late-announced Balaguerian version were released in Manila.