ANTIPOLO City—Fr. Gerardo Evarola is marking this week 25 years as a Catholic priest with nine Thanksgiving Masses in parishes he had served in five towns in the capital and in Pampanga.
The 62-year-old Angeles City-born Evarola, a chemist at the now defunct Clark Air Base in Pampanga, erstwhile home of the US 13th Air Force, before entering the priesthood, began the nine-day 6 p.m. Masses at the Holy Cross Parish in his birthplace in Sapang Bato, Angeles on Wednesday.
With him was his Baguio City-based sibling, Sister Agnes, SPC, of the Roman Catholic religious congregation for teaching, nursing, visiting the poor and taking care of orphans, the old and infirm and the mentally ill.
Others included Rosie Marie Katanyag, Amy Vicencio, Willie Imperial and Maria Rosa Cabie of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish in Brookside, Cainta where Evarola has been the parish priest since October 2009.
At 6 p.m. tonight, he takes his 25th sacerdotal caravan of celebrating Thanksgiving Masses to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Antipolo, also known as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage, which attracts millions of pilgrims annually.
It enshrines the Marian image of Nuestra Señora de la Paz y Buen Viaje and is the seat of the Bishop of Antipolo, the city nestled on hills overlooking the metropolis.
Tomorrow, he will celebrate his fourth Thanksgiving Mass at the Shrine Parish of the Our Lady of the Abandoned in Marikina City.
The nine-day caravan culminates on Nov. 10, with another 6 p.m. Mass at the One Cainta Arena with the charismatic community where Evarola is a spiritual adviser.
He is now on his eighth year as parish priest of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of the middle-income subdivision Brookside Hills in Cainta, a first class town in Rizal.