THE highest-ranking Church official to ever set foot on Pampanga came to the Center for Kapampangan Studies to open an exhibit featuring wood and stone artifacts from different parish churches in the province.

His Eminence, Francesco Cardinal Marchisano, DD, Vicar-General of the Vatican City-State, President of the Fabric of St. Peter and President of the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archaeology, recently visited the Archdiocese of San Fernando to fulfill a promise he had made when he failed to attend the Third Biennial National Convention of Church Cultural Heritage Workers held last year at Holy Angel University. His elevation to the College of Cardinals coincided with the convention.

Cardinal Marchisano was accompanied by Dr. Cristina Carlo-Stella, secretary of the Pontifical Commission on the Cultural Heritage of the Church, of which the Cardinal is the former president.

The exhibit is the result of the six-month special course on Pampanga church history facilitated by Prof. Regalado Trota Jose at the Holy Angel University, in cooperation with the HAU ABSTRAK Art Group and KAMARU, a student archaeological organization. HAU President Bernadette Nepomuceno led hundreds of faculty, administrators and students in welcoming the Cardinal.

The University choir, brass band, rondalla, dance theatre group and traditional Kapampangan polosador all performed during the arrival ceremonies. Archbishop Paciano Aniceto earlier accompanied Cardinal Marchisano in a tour of the Archdiocesan Museum, the half-buried San Guillermo Church of Bacolor and the Santiago de Galicia Church of Betis, where the visitors were greeted by townspeople dancing the kuraldal in the street.

Dr. Carlo-Stella said the Pampanga welcome was “the best welcome the Cardinal has received anywhere in the world.