Bishop Elenito Galido was laid to rest on Thursday, December 14. He is remembered by many for receiving displaced families from Marawi City when the clash between government troops and ISIS-inspired Maute group broke out. (Divina M. Suson/ davaotoday.com)
ILIGAN CITY, Philippines – More than a hundred of priests from all over the country came here Thursday morning to
pay their last respects to Bishop Elenito Galido as he was laid to rest in a small room at the left side of the altar of St. Michael’s Cathedral.
Eleven archbishops and bishops came to concelebrate the funeral mass which was attended by hundreds of Catholic devotees, including students of St. Michael’s College, a school in Iligan City named after the cathedral where Galido served for 11 years.
St. Michael de Archangel is also the patron saint of Iligan City. Archbishop Martin Jumoad of Ozamiz City led the mass celebration for the 64-year-old bishop who led the Diocese of Iligan welcomed thousands of displaced residents who fled the war in Marawi City.
Gilbert Galorio, a church worker, said the small room where the bishop was buried is previously the Chapel of Saints.
It is reserved by the diocese as burial room for the bishop and priests of the diocese of Iligan City.
“He is the first to be buried here because the priests who died ahead of him were buried in a Catholic Cemetery in (barangay) Villaverde,” Galorio said.
Melvin Anggot, a lay minister and member of the Charismata Media Ministry, remembers Galido as someone who did not know how to get angry.
He describes the bishop as very soft-spoken, approachable and fatherly-like whom one can make a joke with.
“Kung dili niya maangayan ang imong isulti, molingo-lingo lang siya, then mohilom. Makabalo nami nga wala na siya naka-uyon, (If he does not agree with what you said, he will just shake his head and keep silent. We would know then that he does not agree with it),” Anggot said.
They became close friends when they started their radio program two years ago though they know each other since Galido was appointed as fourth bishop in the Diocese of Iligan.
Many did not know, the bishop is a radio broadcaster until he died last December 5 after battling liver cirrhosis.
He was personally anchoring a canned 5-minute radio program aired daily in DXIC RMN and in Brigada News FM both in Iligan City and in Lite FM in Maranding, Lanao del Norte.
According to Anggot, it was Galido who personally asked him he wanted to go back into radio broadcasting.
“In his early years as priest in Bukidnon, he was a broadcaster of Radio Veritas,” Anggot said.
Galido was also an environmentalist and an advocate of organic farming, said Iligan City Vice Mayor Jemar Vera Cruz.
In late 1980s, Galido started his own reforestation project in Mt. Capistrano, Managok, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon where he was born. The late bishop had his sacerdotal ordination on April 25, 1979 and first served under the Diocese of Malaybalay.
He was appointed as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Iligan on March 25, 2006, consecrated on September 8, 2006.
Galido was also Chairman of the Episcopal Commission on Culture (ECC) of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.(davaotoday.com)
