Racializing Reform: Bishop Francisco Gaínza and the Creation of the Native Clergy in the Philippines, 1863–1879

Abstract

This essay investigates how Bishop Francisco Gaínza grappled with the question of the struggle between the native secular clergy and the Spanish regular clergy. Gaínza was initially an advocate for reforms in the Philippine church especially as they related to the issue of handing over parishes to the secular clergy (or technically, secularization). However, racism complicated the way he personally thought of and enacted these reforms. I argue that insofar as the question remained within the bounds of ecclesiastical affairs, Gaínza rallied against the marginalization of the secular clergy—who by then were predominantly natives. But when the struggle assumed proto-nationalist overtones, he distanced himself from it, thus radically reshaping the way his perceived reforms took effect. Like what most Spanish clerics thought, native priests in the mind of Gaínza must be trained and educated into loyal state workers—all these, while Gaínza maintained his view that native priests were “intrinsically” inferior to Europeans.