RIZAL RETRACTION

Austin Coates

Fr. Pio Pi

Angela Shane FacunLei Profeta

#2022 EDITION

Manila, Philippines

Jennica SuarezChristine Dela Pierre

December 30, 1896

Rafael Palma

Rizalist Scholars

Jesuit Priests

Fr. Vicente Balaguer

The night before his death by firing squad at the Luneta on December 30, 1896, accounts exist that Rizal allegedly retracted his Masonic ideals and his writings and reconverted to Catholicism following several hours persuasion by Jesuit priests.

at the Bagumbayan, Manila

DEATH OF RIZAL

A leader of the reformist movement in Spain, Dr. Jose Rizal was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by a Spanish court-martial after being implicated as a leader of the Philippine Revolution.

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The Rizal Retraction

"I have personally intervened and witnessed it myself; and I subscribe and confirm it with an oath. I testify that on the very day of Rizal's death I wrote a very detailed account of everything."

ACCORDING TO FR. VICENTE BALAGUER

Fr. Vicente Balaguer was one of the Jesuit priests who visitedRizal during his last hours in Fort Santiago and claimed that he managed to persuade Rizal to denounce Masonry and return A the Catholic fold. In an affidavit executed in 1917 when he had returned to Spain, Balaguer also claimed that he was the one who solemnized the marriage of Josephine Bracken and Rizal hours before the hero’s execution.

the sequence of events hours before Rizal's execution

ACCORDING TO FR. VICENTE BALAGUER

"At last, he surrendered so willingly and so completely, and the proofs of religiousness and piety were such and so many that, with much less, the most exacting person would have been satisfied. He was right indeed when he said, wondering at the change wrought in himself, that he was the Rizal of some time ago, but another entirely different..."

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FR. PIO PI

Fr. Pio Pi was the Jesuit Superior in the Philippines during the time when Rizal was executed. In 1917, he issued an affidavit recounting his involvement in the alleged retraction of Rizal. Unlike Father Balaguer, however, he was involved only in securing the retraction document from the Archbishop of Manila Bernardino Nozaleda, and writing another shorter retraction document as well which was the one Rizal allegedly copied.

Lawyer, writer, educator, and politician Rafael Palma was the author of Biografia de Rizal, a work on the life of the National Hero which won a literary contest in 1938 sponsored by the Commonwealth Government. The publication of the book, however, was postponed because of World War II and only saw print in 1949. That same year, an English translation by Roman Ozaeta with the title Pride of the Malay Race was published by Prentice-Hall, Inc. in the United States. The story of Rizal's alleged retraction is found in Chapters 32 and 33 with Palma's analysis in the latter chapter.

RAFAEL PALMA

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...in short, Rizal's conversion was a pious fraud to make the people believe that that extraordinary man broke down and succumbed before the Church which he had fought.- Rafael Palma, Rizalist Scholar

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This early awareness on Rizal eventually led to the writing and publication of his book-Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr (Oxford University Press, 1956)-the first Rizal biography written by a European since Vida y Escritos del Dr. Jose Rizal by Wenceslao Retana in 1907. The second edition of the book was published in the Philippines by Solidaridad Publishing House in 1992.

Austin Coates's interest in Jose Rizal began when he was Assistant Colonial Secretary and Magistrate in Hong Kong in 1950. His first study on Rizal was on the latter's year-long stay in Hong Kong (1891-1892). At that time, many of the personalities who knew Rizal were still alive.

Those who had read Rizal's books or who knew him closely, which at that time meant the family and his wide circle of personal friends, most of whom were abroad, took one look at the announcement and dubbed it... an ecclesiastical fraud. - Austin Coates, Rizalist Scholar

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