Bacolod City marker to memorialize spot where St. John Paul II prayed in 1981

This Sunday, Catholics in Bacolod City will give newly-canonized Saint John Paul II a posthumous birthday gift of sorts - a marker immortalizing the spot where he prayed when he visited the Philippines 33 years ago.

During the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, Bacolod Bishop Vicente Navarra will bless the marker at the sanctuary of the San Sebastian Cathedral where John Paul II prayed during his 1981 visit.

“When St. John Paul II visited the San Sebastian Cathedral he prayed in the sanctuary in front of the image of San Sebastian. The spot, sanctified by the presence and prayers of the new saint, will be memorialized by a marker that Bishop Navarra will bless,” Father Deogracias Camon, parochial vicar of the San Sebastian Cathedral Parish, said in an article posted on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines news site.

John Paul II, or Karol Wojtyla, was born on May 18, 1920.

The CBCP noted it is part of Catholic liturgical tradition that "visiting prelates on official visits to churches pray in front of the altar of the patron saint of the church."

Camon said John Paul II's recent canonization was doubly significant for Bacolod.

“John Paul II, not only blessed the diocese through his presence, but he also visited us during a period when the Negros provinces were undergoing social and political upheavals due to the widening inequality between the hacienda owners and the sugar field workers,” he said.

He added the pope, in his address then to landowners and sugarcane plantation workers, helped the clergy and the faithful in Negros "look at the situation in the light of the social teachings of the Church." — Joel Locsin/JDS, GMA News