With plans for a split, who will shepherd Asia’s biggest archdiocese?

The Archdiocese of Cebu - home to 4 million Catholics - is set to become three smaller dioceses. It's also set for a new bishop.

Plans to split the Archdiocese of Cebu into three smaller dioceses have hit delays, leaving the four million Catholics in the archdiocese uncertain about the future of their local Church, more than a year after the Philippines’ bishops’ conference approved a plan to see Asia’s largest diocese become three smaller ones.

A Filipino Catholic at prayer in the Archdiocese of Cebu. Courtesy photo.

And as Cebu’s Archbishop Jose Palma reaches the retirement age for bishops next month, archdiocesan officials have told The Pillar that their planned split will not happen this year, and may not happen under Palma’s leadership.

The erection of smaller Cebu dioceses “will not happen this jubilee year,” Msgr. Joseph Tan, archdiocesan media liaison officer, told The Pillar this week. The archdiocese is instead focusing on its own jubilee year efforts, Tan said.

“Archbishop Palma has not said much about the subject lately,” Monsignor Tan said.

That disclosure represents a shift for the plan in Cebu.

Archbishop Palma had said previously that he hoped the project to reshape the archdiocese, which awaits endorsement from Archbishop Charles Brown, papal nuncio to the Philippines, would be implemented this year as a jubilee gift to Cebu’s Catholics.

The archdiocese has said it envisions a Cebu archdiocese, remaining with the newly created neighboring dioceses of Carcar to its south and Danao to its north, bringing bishops closer to their flocks, and making easier the provision of pastoral care.

But the archdiocese is now planning for the possibility that Palma’s resignation will be accepted before the split takes place, leaving uncertain when the long planned split will occur, and under what kind of leadership.

Archbishop José Serofia Palma, O.P. Credit: Archdiocese of Cebu.

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The Cebu archdiocese covers a narrow, mountainous mainland and 167 satellite islands on Cebu Strait, Camotes Sea, Visayan Sea, and Tañon Strait. The territory’s longest distance is around 168 miles.

In a seeming preview of three new Cebu dioceses, prelates opened the jubilee year simultaneously in different churches on Dec. 29, 2024. Archbishop Palma led ceremonies at Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral while then-auxiliary bishops Ruben Labajo and Midyphil Billones, respectively, presided over rites at Saint Catherine of Alexandria shrine in Carcar and Saint Thomas of Villanueva shrine in Danao.

Palma delegated one of his two vicars general, Msgr. Vicente Rey Penagunda to sail to Bantayan Island, Cebu to open the year at the same time at Saints Peter and Paul parish there.

Cebu’s Catholics have been offering the oratio imperata or mandatory prayer for the division of their archdiocese since the Solemnity of Corpus et Sanguis Christi or the Body and Blood of the Lord on June 1, 2024. And there is no directive to terminate the recitation of the prayer before Masses, Cebu priests told The Pillar.

The division plan received the backing of the CBCP in 2023, and after belated consultations, support from previously skeptical lay persons and clergy.

The plan’s execution appeared imminent following the reassignment of the bishops who assisted Palma. Labajo was installed on Jan. 28 as the bishop of the new diocese of Prosperidad, and Pope Francis on Feb. 2 appointed Billones archbishop of Jaro.

To observers, that seemed to herald the birth of smaller Cebu dioceses and the appointment of their bishops.

But the jubilee year from Christmas Eve 2024 until the Solemnity of the Epiphany on Jan. 6, 2026 has turned the attention of Cebuanos to special activities such as pilgrimages to 32 designated jubilee churches scattered throughout Cebu.

And a committee of Cebu priests is meanwhile preparing, in case the pope immediately accepts Palma’s resignation, to offer their assistance as the archbishop’s crozier changes hands, The Pillar learned from another source familiar with the matter.

If Pope Francis does not ask Palma to remain, as Pope Benedict XVI asked former archbishop Cardinal Ricardo Vidal to continue in service for four years past his retirement age, the archdiocese might see a new head in time for Holy Week.

The pope’s advanced age and health problems could accelerate the changeover, for perhaps the pontiff’s only opportunity to appoint a Cebu archbishop.

But Palma’s age and the jubilee year are slowing things down on the diocesan split.

And the formation of the leadership transition team is not the only sign that a new Cebu archbishop may be coming soon.

Archbishop Palma himself, in saying he hopes the archdiocese’s division transpires before he retires, introduced the possibility of it taking place after he steps down.

In the wings is the Bishop of Kalookan, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, who was made a cardinal in Dec. 2024, and whose elevation to the cardinalate has led Cebuanos to speculate that David will be the bishop appointed to lead their see — and to oversee the split.

David’s elevation caused excitement among Cebuanos hoping for another cardinal to lead the see of Cebu, and lamenting that Archbishop Palma was not given a red hat in consistories under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Cebu was a red hat archdiocese for nearly half a century, and Archbishop Palma’s immediate predecessors were both elevated to the College of Cardinals, which helps popes govern.

Cardinal Julio Rosales received the red hat from Pope Paul VI in 1969 and Vidal received his from Pope John Paul II in 1985.

For his part, Vidal dedicated his cardinalate to pursuing peace. As president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, he urged Filipinos to discern and respond nonviolently to fraudulent snap elections in 1986, laying the framework for the Edsa People Power Revolution that peacefully overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The cardinal also helped pacify rebel soldiers who often tried to topple the government of President Corazon Aquino between 1987 to 1990, counseled President Joseph Estrada to resign to keep a revolution bloodless in 2001, and regularly condemned vigilantism.

Cardinal Vidal handed over the Cebu archdiocese to Palma in 2011. The cardinal campaigned to end bloodshed between fraternities, remaining Cebu’s archbishop emeritus until he died in 2017.

Cebuanos have told The Pillar they’re hoping Cardinal David would be named to succeed Palma in Cebu, just as Cardinal Jose Advincula was appointed to lead the Manila archdiocese after becoming cardinal as Capiz archbishop.

Unlike Cardinal Vidal, who was appointed to Vatican councils and congregations after becoming Cebu archbishop, David possessed a global profile even before becoming cardinal. He holds a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and studied Aramaic at the École Biblique in the Holy Land. He participated in synods of bishops under Popes Benedict XVI and Francis, and was elected councilor of the secretariat of the concluding Synod on Synodality in 2024, having served on its information commission in 2023. He was a delegate to the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in 2008, and was appointed a member of the Dicastery of Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) just weeks after he became a cardinal.

Like Filipino cardinals Advincula and Luis Antonio Tagle, David is under 80 years old and is eligible to be nominated to the papacy and vote in a conclave.

If the pontiff chooses Cardinal David, he will become the first Cebu archbishop who is already a cardinal. Rosales and Vidal had been given red hats only after years of serving the Cebu archdiocese.

The cardinal is from Kapampangan-speaking Pampanga. If appointed to Cebu, he would need, like previous non-Cebuano bishops and archbishops, to become fluent in the Cebuano language. Cebuano is spoken by at least 20 million Filipinos, a figure surpassed only by the number of Tagalog speakers.

David’s appointment would make him just the third prelate behind Vidal and Palma to serve as Cebu archbishop and CBCP president.

Cardinal David’s experience prepared him to engage the country’s politicos including Cebu’s 53 city and municipal mayors, governor, and around a dozen representatives to the Lower House of Philippine Congress.

Cardinal David faced threats to his life while defending the poor and innocent of Kalookan during the blood-drenched anti-drug campaigns of Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippine presidency (2016-2022). He can consolidate the Cebu archdiocese’s effort to foster integral human development. Cebuanos still suffer widespread poverty notwithstanding their province’s status as the nation’s richest locale outside Manila.

The cardinal’s call for journalists to help end clerical sex abuse in the Philippines signaled the opening of a new chapter of accountability for the church given its iterative attempts to craft an adequate response to the malaise since 2002, the year bishops first issued a collective public apology for the misbehaviors of priests.

Cardinal David’s membership in the DDF plenary makes him familiar with the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the dicastery’s disciplinary section, which processes canonical cases against clerics.

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If David is not the pontiff’s choice, Pope Francis has other options with concrete connections to the Cebu archdiocese itself.

Formally called the Archdiocese of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of Cebu, the archdiocese is known, in the words of John Paul II, as the cradle of Christianity in the Philippines since it was here that Filipinos first sought and received the Sacrament of Baptism on April 14, 1521.

The Philippines’ oldest and most venerated sacred image, Santo Niño is kept in a Cebu basilica that is named after the Christ-child’s statue and recognized as the mother of all other churches in the Philippines.

The archdiocese, spread across an area just under 2,000 square miles, is organized into 185 parishes and missions for 4,621,792 Catholics under the care of 626 priests, 2,035 religious brothers and sisters, and 144 seminarians.

The archdiocese and suffragan dioceses Dumaguete, Maasin, Tagbilaran, and Talibon comprise the ecclesiastical province of Cebu, which has grown into a fount of Church leaders.

Bishops who first serve as auxiliaries to the Cebu archbishop have often been subsequently appointed to head separate archdioceses and dioceses inside and outside the ecclesiastical province.

As of 2025, 10 of the 126 members of the CBCP — including Palma, Labajo, and Billones — were former auxiliary bishops of Cebu, and at least four others were priests of the archdiocese.

A pair of Cebuano brothers, Archbishops Francisco and Osvaldo Padilla, are respectively apostolic nuncio to Guatemala and apostolic nuncio emeritus to South Korea and Mongolia.

Two other Cebuanos are Vatican diplomats. Msgr. Jan Thomas Limchua and Fr. Hezron Cartagena work respectively in apostolic nunciatures in the Netherlands and Ivory Coast. Archbishop Bernardito Auza, apostolic nuncio to Spain, is from the Talibon diocese, a suffragan of Cebu.

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If Pope Francis prefers someone with Cebu experience to lead the archdiocese, he could pick Archbishop John Du of Palo, whom he visited in 2015.

Du would bring with him vast experience, having helped rebuild an archdiocese that was flattened by the strongest typhoon ever to make landfall, Haiyan which struck the Philippines in 2013.

Du is also known for encouraging the continuing development of the clergy, sending priests abroad for further studies. He is regarded as a talented financial manager, equipped to address the financial aspect of raising the new Cebu dioceses — finance has been reported as a crucial consideration in the Cebu archdiocesan reshaping.

If the pontiff is looking for a bishop who has pastored a great number of souls, he may well transfer to Cebu Bishop Villarojo from Malolos. Like Cebu, Malolos has a large Catholic population – the fourth largest in the Philippines.

Villarojo’s experience in Malolos, a suffragan of the primatial Archdiocese of Manila gives him a unique, national point of view. And a return to Cebu as its archbishop would make him only the second after Vidal to have leadership experience in Luzon, the biggest of the Philippines’ three major island groups.

Villarojo is a member of the permanent council of the Philippine bishops’ conference and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, Italy.

For years, he was a secretary to Cardinal Vidal. And as auxiliary bishop in Cebu, he was secretary-general of the 2016 International Eucharistic Congress held in the city.

Villarojo is known for his accessibility and bold preaching.

He has drawn attention in the Philippines for preaching against the online spread of fake news and historical distortion, attempts to legalize divorce in the Philippines, and blind devotion to politicians who confuse extrajudicial killing with law enforcement.

Villarojo, if he becomes Cebu archbishop, could eventually be elected CBCP president, as had happened to Vidal and Palma.

If either man was picked, Archbishop Du or Archbishop Villarojo would become only the second Cebuano ordinary of Cebu. The last time Cebu’s spiritual head was a native was in 1931, close to a century ago when Cebu was still a diocese under Bishop Juan Gorordo.

But if the Holy See prefers someone with extensive experience as a Cebu bishop, the pope could make Bishop Cortes the new shepherd of Cebuanos.

Cortes comes from the Cebuano-speaking island province of Siquijor in Dumaguete diocese, a suffragan of Cebu.

Cortes assisted Cardinal Vidal and Archbishop Palma in Cebu for almost 12 years from 2001 to 2013. That makes the prelate the longest-serving active ordinary who was a Cebu auxiliary.

Like Palma, Cortes graduated with a doctorate in theology from the Angelicum.

Cortes made international headlines when he posed the 2023 dubia that the DDF used to reaffirm the church’s prohibition on membership of Catholics in masonic societies.

The bishop also backed opposition to government plans to reclaim a large part of Dumaguete City’s waterfront. This would have been devastating for the coastal and marine environment. Protests, including a penitential walk that Bishop Cortes and Dumaguete clergy led, resulted in the Philippine Reclamation Authority’s issuance of an order to stop the reclamation.

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Whoever becomes Cebu archbishop will face challenges other than the delayed split of the archdiocese.

The new archbishop will face the challenge of responding to demand from victims’ advocates and church critics for more powerful responses to abuse and model victim-first solicitude.

Options include making reporting to civil authorities the standard first response to abuse allegations and opening archdiocesan archives for independent attorneys to audit any abuse, in aid of healing and reparation for survivors as well as the prosecution of perpetrators.

The new archbishop will be forced to evaluate whether such steps can be integrated with Philippine church-run rehabilitation programs for clerical sex offenders.

The archdiocese faces pressure to clarify what it means by acknowledging that abuse by clergy is a grave problem that requires a response based on a new paradigm of accountability and safeguarding minors and vulnerable adults. It already registered its concern for clergy who may be falsely accused, and explained that it previously cooperated with civil authorities in restoring rehabilitated priests to closely supervised active ministry.

And the new archbishop, whether appointed in March or thereafter, will face the challenge of following a historic ecclesiastical career: He will steward and steer the reconfiguration of a local church on which Archbishop Palma has made his mark.

The milestones include Cebu’s hosting of the 53rd IEC in 2016 and the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Christianity’s arrival in the Philippines in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021.

The anniversary saw events unfold under restrictive public health protocols, followed by the distribution of replicas of the Holy Child Jesus of Cebu in countries such as Spain and Portugal that are associated with the expedition that brought the original image to the Philippines.

Archbishop Palma supported church volunteers and other Cebuanos as they tried to mitigate the impact of the pandemic through donation drives and free distribution of hygiene materials and food to prevent famine.

Cebuanos under Palma hosted the first Thanksgiving Day for Priests in 2018, the Philippines’ National Youth Day in 2019, and the 5th Asian Apostolic Congress on Mercy in 2024.

A leading campaigner for good ecological stewardship, Palma also activated the Cebu Archdiocesan Social Advocacies commission, oversaw the establishment of the Cebu Archdiocesan Digital Communications Ministry that maintains popular social media handles, supported the Cebu Ecumenical Family, encouraged the opening of Catholic Charities or Caritas offices in every parish, and inaugurated the archdiocesan safeguarding office.

He generated controversy by approving a building project on church land to generate income for retired priests and demolition of a minor seminary chapel to give way to a convention center for the IEC. But he has demonstrated care for church heritage, approving the renovation of the Cathedral Museum of Cebu and moves to retrieve stolen church artifacts.

Archbishop Palma emphasized a diversity of spiritualities, urging pastoral care for both Cebu’s Catholic charismatic communities and Cebuanos in full communion with the church who are devoted to the Tridentine Mass.

He encouraged all candidates for ordination to the priesthood to join charismatic “Life in the Spirit” seminars.

He also routinely authorized celebrations of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, until he indefinitely suspended its celebration late in 2024, not long after Philippine media covered the activities in Cebu of the traditionalist Society of Pope Pius X, which has an “irregular” canonical status in the Church.

Elected in 2011 to serve for two years as CBCP president, Palma declined customary nomination for a second term to focus on serving his archdiocese.

He criticized the reproductive health bill that became law under Philippine President Benigno Aquino III and street murders under Duterte.

Palma’s time in Cebu saw the completion of a project dear to his predecessor – the cause to canonize Blessed Pedro Calungsod. Pope Benedict XVI canonized the teenage martyr in 2012. Palma also backed the cause to beatify Cebuano native Venerable Teofilo Camomot. Devotees of the late coadjutor Cagayan de Oro archbishop await a miracle through his intercession that will facilitate his beatification.

The Cebu pilgrim destinations founded under Palma include the replica of the Chapel of Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima on the hills of San Remigio town and the Shrine of the Divine Mercy that will feature a colossal statue of Christ on a hilltop in Consolacion town.

Pope Francis in 2019 made Archbishop Palma a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture headed by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi and in 2019 appointed him to the Dicastery for Culture and Education led by Cardinal José Mendonça.

Palma’s episcopal motto, Non nobis, Domine, is Latin for the beginning of Psalm 115:1 that reads: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness.”