A Novitiate with No Particular Place to Be

A Novitiate with No Particular Place to Be

by Fr. Hilario V. Sicat Jr., OP

On March 1, 1978, Fr. Vincent de Couesnongle authorized the transfer of the Novitiate from the then Convent of the Most Holy Rosary in Jaro, Iloilo to the Convent of Our Lady of the Rosary in Manaoag, Pangasinan. The Novitiate was moved to Manaoag due to the impending plan to use the Lizares Mansion as the venue for a new formal school of the Province: the Angelicum School-Iloilo (In its incipient years, the cash-strapped Province established entities, e.g., parishes and schools, that would facilitate cash inflow for the support of its apostolates and for the expenses for the formation of the brothers.). In Manaoag, the novices occupied the third floor of the Fathers’ Residence. The Novitiate remained in Manaoag until May 1982. 

But because the provisionary quarters of the novices at the third floor of the Fathers’ Residence could no longer accommodate the growing number of novices, and at the same time, due to the increasing number of assigned priests in the convent, it was transferred anew to the Convent of Santo Domingo in Quezon City. Incidentally, with the transfer of the Pre-Novitiate from the Studentate Building in the Convent of Santo Domingo to Letran College in Calamba in June 1981, ample space in the Studentate Building was made available for the novices. The novices occupied only half of the third floor of the Studentate Building, separating them from the Student-brothers who were in the second floor, and in the other half of the third floor. 

In the course of time, due to limited space and the increasing number of brothers, over-crowding was once again experienced in the Studentate. Thus, the Provincial Chapter of 1988 commissioned the Provincial to establish a separate formation house for the novices. The task of looking for a place and constructing a new edifice for the novices fell on the shoulders of the then Master of Novices, Br. Edmund Nantes, OP. Many places were considered for the location of the Novitiate, such as the Dominican Hill in Baguio, Marikina, Antipolo, Binangonan, Angat, Tagaytay, and Davao. 

With the stroke of Providence, and the intercession of the Lady of the Rosary, the Novitiate found its place on an idle lot in the vicinity of the Church. On September 8, 1989, the cornerstone of the Novitiate was laid. And on March 25, 1990, on the Solemnity from which its name was derived, the Dominican Novitiate of Annunciation was inaugurated. This ended along search for a place where the brothers might spend a year or so in solitude and prayer. It turned out the Lady wanted her sons to be initiated in the Dominican way of life, under her maternal protection.