United States or Angola ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


When Father Obach, the Jesuit priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in the principal house, Rizal and his boys burned shells, made mortar, and soon built a fine stone stairway. They also did another piece of masonry work in the shape of a dam for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry yard; the overflow from the dam was made to fill a swimming tank.

The first retraction is written in his style and it certainly contains nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there, Rizal prepared a practically similar statement. Possibly the report of that priest aided in outlining the draft which the Jesuits substituted for the Archbishop's form.

Any marriage so bought would be just as little a sacrament as an absolutely civil marriage, and the latter was free from hypocrisy. So as man and wife Rizal and Josefina lived together in Talisay. Father Obach sought to prejudice public feeling in the town against the exile for the "scandal," though other scandals happenings with less reason were going on unrebuked.

The pages of "Dapitan", which some have considered to be the first chapter of an unfinished novel, may reasonably be considered no more than Rizal's rejoinder to Father Obach, written in sarcastic vein and primarily for Carnicero's amusement, unless some date of writing earlier than this should hereafter be found for them.

Rizal at first feared that some political retraction would be asked, but when assured that only his religious beliefs would be investigated, promptly submitted a statement which Father Obach says covered about the same ground as the earliest published of the retractions said to have been made on the eve of Rizal's death.