The National Museum of the Philippines (NMP) has decided to return the pulpit panels to Boljoon town in the Province of Cebu, “subject to certain terms.”

In an official statement, the Board of Trustees of the NMP, in its regular meeting held in Manila on May 8, 2024, approved a set of recommendations with the objective of returning the panels to the pulpit of Boljoon Church “subject to certain terms which are envisaged to form part of a comprehensive agreement between the National Museum of the Philippines and the Archdiocese of Cebu in support of the Boljoon Church complex as a National Cultural Treasure and candidate for UNESCO World Heritage Inscription.”

“The Board also instructed the Director-General to initiate discussions with the Archdiocese of Cebu immediately on the matter,” the statement added. 

To recall, NMP Director-General Jeremy Barns wrote a letter dated April 2, 2024 in response to Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia’s letter sent on April 1, 2024. The governor already wrote a letter on February 26, 2024 citing that the four pulpit panels form part of important religious and cultural heritage of Cebu. Barns made a reply about a month later, on March 25, 2024, or a day prior to the Holy Week holidays.

Barns said, in his reply dated April 2, that they would be happy to take on the governor’s offer of them coming to Cebu and visit the Archdiocesan Shrine of Patrocinio de Maria Santissima Parish Church in Boljoon where the original provenance of the four pulpit panels was established.  

Cebu Congressman Edsel Galeos has filed a bill at the House of Representatives urging the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the NMP to return to Boljoon town four pulpit panels that were donated to the museum.

Galeos is representative of Cebu’s Second District where Boljoon is situated.

His bill came after the municipality asked NMP to open an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the panels finding their way to the museum many years after they were lost or stolen allegedly from the church in Boljoon in the 1980s.

In the bill, Galeos cited Republic Act 10066 or the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009, which states that one of the objectives of the law is to “protect, preserve, conserve, and promote the nation’s cultural heritage, its property and histories, and the ethnicity of local communities.”

Private collectors who NMP said acquired the panels through legitimate means donated the panels to the museum in February 2024.