CEBU CITY -- Bienvenido Opendo of Barangay Canduman, Mandaue City has been a mananabtan since he was 15 years old.
At 79, Opendo remains a sought-after mananabtan, and his services are requested by families from as far as Daanbantayan, Cebu.
He said a priest from Mandaue City taught him, along with two other boys and three girls in Canduman, how to pray for the dead. The priest made them memorize prayers.
Opendo, whose father was also a mananabtan, said he doesn’t ask for payment when he prays for the dead, which usually lasts an hour.
Most of the families that ask for his service are poor. Instead of giving him money, they send him food. Well-off families give him money, however. He said the biggest amount he has ever received was P1,000.
Personal faith
But it’s not just the money that keeps Opendo doing what he does. Part of it stems from his belief that a person has a soul.
“Motuo ko ug kalag. Dili na lang ko mag-mananabtan kung di ko mutuo (I believe in the soul. I would not choose to be a mananabtan if I didn’t believe in it),” he said.
For another mananabtan like 67-year-old Lucia Pepito of Liloan, Cebu, prayers should be offered to the dead as a form as respect to the Catholic tradition.
“Mao man ni ang naandan (It’s a tradition),” said Pepito, who also has a small sari-sari store just outside the Liloan Public Cemetery.
“Kung dili rosaryohan, mura ra ug iro nga ilubong ang tawo (Unless we pray for the dead, they would be buried just like dogs),” she added.
Pepito said she earns P50 to P100 from each client in the Liloan Public Cemetery. She gets as many as five clients a day.
Pepito, who has been a mananabtan since she was in her 40s, said it was her mother-in-law who taught her how to pray for the dead.
Offering
Opendo said he has not noticed a change in the way the mananabtan prays nowadays. But he said there liturgical masses were not common before.
“The church does not ban the practice, but it is not encouraged,” a church official said about hiring a mananabtan.
After all, the best offerings for departed loved ones are prayers, and the practice of praying for the dead, whether during a wake or All Souls’ Day, should focus on helping the souls in purgatory, said Msgr. Jose Dosado.
The episcopal vicar for Metro Cebu North said if there is no priest to say the liturgy novena or mass for the dead, a lay minister may do the liturgy of the word or do the readings for the day.
The Archdiocese of Cebu has conducted an awareness seminar or review of the basic teaching for a group of mananabtan.
Monsignor Dosado pointed out that the mananabtan recite some prayers in Latin but not all of them understand the meaning of the phrases.
Dosado said praying for the dead is a practice taught as part of basic Catholic catechism that the Catholic Church is divided into three “churches.”
There’s the Church Triumphant or the souls and saints in heaven who we do not need to pray for, but we can ask for their prayers.
Bells
The Church Militant is made up of the living and is so-called because people at every moment are engaged in “spiritual war against the world, the flesh, and the devil.”
The Church Suffering refers to the souls in purgatory who cannot pray for themselves, but they can pray for the souls in this life.
Dosado said the prayers for the dead are for these souls, that they may be released into heaven.
He said that Archdiocesan Commission on Worship chairman Msgr. Cristobal Garcia gave the seminar so that the mananabtan would understand their purpose in the church.
“There was an attempt to catechize the mananabtan. The church does not encourage the practice but, at least, they should know or understand what they are doing,” said Dosado.
He explained that it is part of tradition, probably dating back to the Spanish era, to ring church bells at 8 p.m. every day.
“This was done to remind people to pray for the dead. But we do not practice that anymore,” he said
