Little is known about the life of Saint Pedro Calungsod. Officially, he is supposed to be from Cebu. And several Cebu localities can rightly claim to be where his family has roots. But there are also Calungsods in Bohol.

It is well-known and backed by documentation that God gave him the honor of dying a martyr. This statement will for sure put off millions of young people—specially those to whom dying for one’s faith is folly.

But the proposition still must be made to them.

Young people must be told that the bad habits they have been helped to develop by the materialistic culture are only going to make them unhappy and bitter as they become adults up to the time when they are aged.

These had habits include considering the ecstasies of orgasms as things they—even in their adolescent years—are entitled to. And also insist on the right to do whatever they please, to try to get by with the least effort and disruption of comforts.

There was a time when elementary school sex and unwanted pregnancies were bad things that Filipinos said happened only in the West. That is no longer true today.

But efforts to make children believe those who tell them to preserve their virginity—boys and girls alike—are undone by teachers and parents who agree that they should be taught to use condoms early.

These teachers and parents—who support the Reproductive Health Bill and want early and explicit sex education to be given to children—think they are being practical. These children will do what they want anyway, they think.

They have that sad mentality because they don’t have the Faith that Pedro Calungsod had. And many of them, who once tried teaching children to value their virginity, found themselves failing to convince their kids. So they became more pragmatic and surrendered to the Culture of Permissiveness—which soon develops into the Culture of Death, that culture which finds abortifacient contraceptives and abortion okay.

Well, the fact that sages of old and wise men and women of today know is that discipline and moral values can’t be effectively taught by people who don’t believe that the final reason for passing on these values is natural law—if you do something wrong you have to pay for it. And the sense of right and wrong—and the sense that right is good and wrong is bad—can only make sense if the teacher also believes, and therefore must teach, that natural law is what God has ordained for everybody to live in order, not disorder, in happiness, not bitterness.
Saint Pedro Calungsod believed to the death in God and his Roman Catholic Faith.

He was a layman
He was a Filipino layman (and not a seminarian as some wire service stories have said he was). He was a catechist. He was born in 1654 and was doing missionary work in Guam, helping the Jesuit mission there.

Blessed John Paul II beatified him on March 5, 2000.

He died trying to protect his mentor, Jesuit Father Diego Jose Luis San Vitores, a missionary. The priest was killed by two Chamorro chieftains who went after the Jesuits when they learned that Fr. Father San Vitores had gone to the house of one of the chiefs to baptize his sick daughter.

Some kind of plague had struck Guam. And it became urgent for the missionaries to baptize the children before they died. But the chiefs said it was the baptism that caused the children to die.

Msgr. Ildebrando Leyson, the rector of the Pedro Calungsod Shrine in Cebu (where our saint was born), explains that the 18-year-old catechist was the first to be attacked.Calungsod, a native of Cebu province in the Philippines, “was the first to be attacked in the assault . . . And they marveled how he was so skillful in evading the darts of the spears . . . until finally he was hit in the chest. He fell and the other assassin split his skull.”
He is the second Filipino saint after San Lorenzo Ruiz.

The Church in the Philippines will launch a nine-year spiritual renewal program, starting today until March 2021.

John Paul II on Pedro Calungsod
In his homily at the beatification Mass on March 5, 2000, the late John Paul II said:

“From his childhood, Pedro Calungsod declared himself unwaveringly for Christ and responded generously to his call…Young people today can draw encouragement and strength from the example of Pedro, whose love of Jesus inspired him to devote his teenage years to teaching the faith as a lay catechist . . .”

“In a spirit of faith, marked by strong Eucharistic and Marian devotion, Pedro undertook the demanding work asked of him and bravely faced the many obstacles and difficulties he met . . .”

“Today he intercedes for the young, in particular those of his native Philippines, and he challenges them,” John Paul II added.

Then he made this call: “Young friends, do not hesitate to follow the example of Pedro, who ‘pleased God and was loved by him’ (Wis 4: 10) and who, having come to perfection in so short a time, lived a full life (cf. ibid., v. 13).”