Wilbur Shadley of Manchester, Michigan, was the first to die. He had paid $658 round-trip fare this fall to join a chartered planeload of 110 seriously ill North Americans who flew to the Philippines for “miraculous” knifeless surgery. Before his death from cancer at age 57, Shadley said faith healer Antonio Agpaoa had promised he would be cured in half a year.
The 110 arrived in Manila October 8 and drove straight to Baguio City, the summer resort base of “Doctor” Agpaoa, who reportedly claims credit for 30,000 operations with his bare hands. Medical authorities have called him a “fake,” and the Philippine Medical Association and federal tax agents are keeping a close watch.
The American pilgrims ranged in age from 7 to 63 and included a clergyman and his nephew. A spokesman for the group, who identified himself as James Osberg of Chicago, said nobody had a “negative attitude” toward physicians but that since they had done all they could, “where else can we turn but to God?” He said many came at the suggestion of their own doctors. The trip was organized by 47-year-old steelworker Joseph Ruffner, who says Agpaoa cured him of an eleven-year spinal infirmity last year.
After the pilgrimage, the Americans reportedly were disappointed. Wheelchair cases were still in wheelchairs. Of those on crutches, only two had shown signs of improvement.
Who is Agpaoa? The origin of his international fame is not clear. One story in the Philippines has it that the Agpaoa cult abroad started among California’s fringe groups, pushed by a chiropractor, a lady writer, and a millionaire who wanted a book written on Agpaoa. The fad faded when TV iconoclast Joe Pyne, after observing Agpaoa in action, broadcast an exposé demonstration of Agpaoa’s surgery. Pyne claimed Agpaoa shows his stuff on fat people so his fingers can push into the flesh and seem to be penetrating, while pressing a hidden sponge in his hand filled with blood.
When the Agpaoa cult died out on the West Coast, it immediately resurfaced elsewhere, leading to the suspicion in the Philippines that a strong spiritualist underground may be linking the world’s miracle men. Agpaoa has traveled not only to America but also to Japan and Puerto Rico to extend his clientele.
Fame shows in the way Agpaoa lives. He has just built a new two-story house on a large estate. The home has two kitchens, a private bar (though he’s mostly a beer man), and a round bed. A flock of household help attend his wife Lucy and their small son and daughter. He packs a wallet stuffed with fifty-peso bills.
Contact with Americans has improved his English. Those who have met him say he’s still unassuming and quite diffident about his powers. Short, plumpish, and pot-bellied, Agpaoa has the dark, ruddy coloring of a highlander, and his famous hands look so typically peasant—squat and stubby—that one is surprised to find them smooth and soft.
Even Agpaoa’s origins are disputed. He is supposed to be 28, but many believe he is older. Some claim he was born in northern or central Luzon, perhaps among the aboriginal Igorot tribe. Agpaoa himself says he was born in Pangasinan, a province north of Manila. This claim is significant, because in Spanish colonial times Pangasinan was famed for the miracle shrine of Manaoag. At the turn of the century the area was a hotbed of folk mysticism. Most faith healers centered in the Baguio City “School of Prophets” are from Pangasinan. Agpaoa was once part of the school but broke with it when he became famous.
What Agpaoa tells of his early years is important, whether factual or not, because it shows a mythic fund in his mind. He kept vanishing at night, he says, and his peasant parents would find him in the morning up a tree. At age seven he discovered the power in his hands.
He dropped out of school in the fourth grade and supposedly followed voices into the mountains for two years of hermit instruction from what he calls “my protector.” He then began his public life as a healer, wandering from town to town and living on donations.
From 1959, when Agpaoa was practicing in Manila, his story can be checked. He tied in with the famous sculptor Tolentino’s spiritualist group and had some trouble with a congressman patient. That year he was charged with illegal medical practice, pled guilty, and was fined. He then migrated to the Baguio school.
A group that included a Belgian priest recently told of watching from the foot of the bed while Agpaoa performed “open-hand surgery” on a thin, pale woman. After kneading her abdomen with his fingers, the observers said, Agpaoa appeared to clench his hands and wrench them apart to reveal a large wound. Then he removed a rough, reddish lump about the size of a potato and asked, “Can you see?”
His hands seemed to clutch the wound, then, and suddenly flew up. The woman’s skin showed no trace of a wound, they said. Later the healer explained, “Her magnetic currents were unbalanced. I had to balance the pituitary gland.… Also, she had a cyst in her uterus.”
The priest said Agpaoa was not breaking any religious law, since he did not ask the patients to perform any ritual or recite any prayer to which the church might object.
PERSONALIA
Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, 63, of Montreal, returned home from the Synod of Bishops to announce he will leave for Africa this month to be a missionary to lepers. During his regime, Quebec Catholics moved out of a near-medieval era.
United Church of Canada Observer Editor A. C. Forrest has been branded a near-anti-Semite by seminary Professor David Demson for his reports criticizing Israeli actions, particularly treatment of 170,000 war refugees.
The Rev. Paul B. Smith of People’s Church, Toronto, turned his Sunday-night evangelical pulpit over to a series of cultists. He says the series strengthened his parishioners’ faith, though a few complained.
Yale paleontologist Elwyn Simons dates an Egyptian ape skull at 28 million years ago, and says it is a “major connecting link” in primate evolution. And Red China claims to have unearthed remains of a new “Peking Man” half a million years old.
Aaron Gamede, son of a pioneer Bantu evangelist with The Evangelical Alliance Mission, has been named education minister of Swaziland.
The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Yale Divinity graduate and local aide of Martin Luther King, Jr., was appointed vice-chairman of Washington, D. C.,’s new City Council and chairman of the area transit authority.
Professors Franz Hilderbrandt and Karlfried Froelich quit Drew University’s seminary to protest the January firing of their dean, Charles W. Ranson (see February 3 issue, page 43).
The Rev. Robert Miller, secretary and alumni director for New York’s Union Theological Seminary, was elected mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, ending fifty-six years of Republican control.
The Rev. James C. Suggs is quitting as top publicist of the Disciples of Christ because of its failure to unify overlapping communications offices.
The Rev. Frederick Morris, author of Bishop Pike: Ham, Heretic, or Hero, has withdrawn an invitation to Pike to return as a Lenten preacher in his New York City church because of the bishop’s spiritualist activities. Pike quipped that now, instead of believing too little, he believes too much.
The Rev. John Randolph Taylor, sparkplug of the pro-civil rights, pro-ecumenism lobby of Southern Presbyterian clergy, is moving from the “national” church in Washington, D.C., to Central Church in downtown Atlanta.
Negro Methodist pastor Allen Johnson of Laurel, Mississippi, his wife, and four children escaped injury when their home was bombed early on November 14. Johnson is a civil rights leader.
McPherson Eaton, 42, son of Soviet—sympathizing Cleveland industrialist Cyrus Eaton, was ordained to the Baptist ministry in Nova Scotia.
Mrs. I. Judson Levy of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, was elected president of the North American Baptist Women’s Union. She is the wife of the dean of the chapel at Acadia University.
INTERCHURCH CIRCUIT
Consultation on Church Union executives decided to seek a full-time staffer to handle communications, editing, and correspondence, and are thinking of preparing a new ecumenical hymnal.
The National Council of Churches and U. S. Roman Catholic bulletins on Christian unity are merging into Unity Trends, to be published by the Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor.
The Episcopal and Catholic bishops in Los Alamos, New Mexico, approved a church building to be used jointly by the two communions.
The United Church of Madagascar, with 800,000 members, has been formed from French and British mission unions and a Quaker group.
PROTESTANT PANORAMA
The 140 American Baptists from seventeen seminaries who attended a denominational assembly were reported to be pretty much “new breed,” but a move to pass a resolution against U. S. involvement in Viet Nam got little publicity after only fifty-nine supported it.
The Los Angeles Sports Arena, site of the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy, drew its biggest crowd in history—more than 27,000—to mark the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. Most were from the city’s 478 Lutheran congregations.
The 14,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, which tries to have something for everyone, is adding a Japanese department to its special ministries to Negro, Spanish, and Chinese members.
The Canadian Churchman says things are changing so radically that next year’s world Anglican bishops’ meeting at Lambeth “may well be the last one.”
Deaths
J. WHITCOMB BROUGHER, SR., 97, one of the founders of the American Baptist Convention; in Portland, Oregon.
HARVEY W. STEIFF, 55, lay moderator of the Evangelical Free Church; in Minneapolis, of a heart attack.
GUNNAR WESTIN, 76, noted Swedish Baptist church historian, and first free churchman appointed to a state university; in Uppsala, of a heart ailment.
S. HARRINGTON LITTELL, 94, missionary to China during the Boxer Rebellion and Episcopal bishop of Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; in New York City.
C. H. BECKER, 69, president emeritus of Wartburg College (American Lutheran); in Waverly, Iowa, of a heart attack.
The Diocese of Coventry, England, noted for its modern cathedral, will mark next year’s golden jubilee with what it hopes will be one of the biggest evangelistic campaigns in modern Anglicanism.
The university arm of the Evangelical Church in Germany split into two organizations—East and West.
MISCELLANY
United States population officially passed 200 million last month, and the United Nations now puts world population at 3,366,000,000. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says the United States is already too crowded and predicts unavoidable widespread starvation in the world by 1975. But a Catholic welfare group in Argentina plans to promote large families, and India has shelved a controversial proposal to sterilize parents with more than three children.
The Orthodox Church in Greece has abolished fees traditionally paid to priests for saying Masses, praying for the dead, kissing the cross, anointing with oil, and conducting weddings, funerals, and christenings. The government approved a 60 per cent increase in pensions for priests. Archbishop Ieronymos is also calling for a study of possible church-state separation.
Because of U. S. bombing in North Viet Nam, the Quaker ship “Phoenix” delivered its medical supplies to South Viet Nam instead of the northern port of Haiphong.
The first year of a national evangelism drive in the western Congo produced more than 2,000 Christian commitments. A record 161 new members were baptized into the Baptist church in the capital city, Kinshasa.
Youth for Christ International next month will begin using Minnesota’s Bethel College as the training center for rally directors. Training will be combined with the regular B.A. curriculum.
Valparaiso Univerity (Missouri Synod Lutheran) got a gift of nearly a million dollars from anonymous donors to build an experimental honors college.
California psychiatrist Max Hayman says the category of “social drinker” is a “myth,” since they drink for the same psychological reasons as alcoholics and expose themselves to the same high disease and death rates. He also attacks the claims that alcohol stimulates appetite and heart functioning or relieves depression.
