Rufino Cardinal Santos Steers the Archdiocese of Manila to Vatican II (1959-1966)

Rufino J. Santos was labeled as a conservative who resisted change, especially during the last half of his stewardship as archbishop of the Archdiocese of Manila. In an era when the Catholic world was beset by the liturgical revival movement and other social movements of the 1960s, Santos strived to preserve his role as a Church militant while the Philippine ecclesiastical hierarchy veered towards making the Catholic Church responsive to the contemporary social ills. The present study uses the historical method framed by Arnold Toynbee’s Challenge and Response theory to discuss, narrate, and analyze how the first Filipino Cardinal preserved the unity and tradition of pre-Vatican II ideals while ironically, being an active participant in the four Vatican II Council Sessions. This study contextualizes how Santos’ adherence to unity and uniformity was driven by his intent to avoid confusion among the priests and the laity and how this intent steered him to spearhead the introduction of the Misa ng Bayan, the first Tagalog translation of the Holy Mass in 1966, as he defied his critics, and ultimately brought the Philippines into the threshold of change that Vatican II envisioned.