Church of Santo Tomas de Villanueva, Alimodian, Iloilo, Part 2 |

Over the following years things went well in the parish until World War II started. Many refugees from the City of Iloilo proper came north to interior towns just like Alimodian where the Convento became a refuge for many wealthy families from the City.

When the Japanese landed in Iloilo on April 18^th, 1942 the refugees already in Alimodian fled to what was considered safer ground in the mountains nearby. Somehow the convento was destroyed by fire at that time and soon afterwards the Civil Government of the town ordered that the church be torched in order to keep it out of the hands of the Japanese occupiers who it was feared would use it as a detention centre and storage place for their supplies. All that remained of the church was the foundations and the belfry. Several local families were able to save many of the church’s artifacts.

Once the Filipino fighters surrendered to the occupiers in 1943 – peace of a sort returned to Alimodian and the then parish priest set about rebuilding the church for his flock. He kept it simple and built a makeshift structure of bamboo and sukdap (sukdap is the skin of young bamboo which is stripped from the stalk and used to tie together stalks that would support a wall or partition.)

Shortly after the war in 1946, led by Father Marcos Deloso efforts were made to rebuild the church but it wasn’t to be. Lady CayCay intervened. [Lady CayCay is the earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale that hit Western Visayas at about 01:48 hours on January 24^th, 1948]. The Lady destroyed everything including the Belfry which had withstood previous earthquakes and calamities sending its historic bells crashing to the ground; the only bell to survive the Lady was the biggest one named ‘Mayor’ which weighed over 3,200 pounds and is still in the belfry today.

San Augustin, an original bell damaged by Lady CayCay

the damaged San Augustin bell

Once again the parishioners were called upon to help build a temporary structure and this they did willingly. Engineers and architects went over the site and what remained of the former structures in detail and found that most were safe to include in a rebuilt church.

The new structure, with the exception of the dome, which was added in the late 1990’s), was opened in 1951 and the repaired belfry in 1952. The old convento building became the new parish hall and activities centre and a new convento was built in the inner courtyard of the church.

If we walk towards the rear of the church and to the left (in the above view towards the rear)we arrive at the Baptistery, which is so beautiful because of its simplicity. The walls of the room are constructed mainly of locally fired brick and large stones while the ceiling is constructed of the same locally fired brick. A statue of St.John the Baptist baptising Jesus oversees the room.