Pedro Peláez
Pedro P. Pelaez ( born June 29, 1812 in Pagsanjan, Laguna province, † June 3, 1863 in Manila ) was a Filipino priest of the Roman Catholic Church, who campaigned for reforms in the Spanish colony of the Philippines. He is considered one of the founders of the secularization movement within the Catholic Church and as an important reformer of the education system in the Philippines.
He was born the son of the Spaniard Jose Pelaez Rubio and the Filipina Josefa Sebastian Gomez Lozada. Due to its status as a mestizo him other options were open. At the age of eleven, his parents died. He was received by the Dominican convent in Manila and soon sent for training at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. He closed his education with a Bachelor of Arts. Then the desire to become priests stirred in him. He enrolled at the Pontifical and Royal University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Manila and earned a total of three academic titles. He obtained a Bachelor of Theology in 1833, the Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1836 and the Doctor of Sacred Theology 1844.
Since 1833 he worked at the Manila Cathedral. On April 18, 1862 he was diocesan administrator of the Archdiocese of Manila, in this position, he had impact on reform within the Church. Besides his work on the Cathedral of Manila, he taught philosophy from 1836 to 1839 at the Colegio de San Jose, now part of the Ateneo de Manila University, and from 1843 to 1861 at the Pontifical and Royal University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Manila. He taught, among others, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora, both of which were influenced by his teachings and received together with Mariano Gomez as the GOMBURZA trio in the Philippine history. Burgos supported Paláez still alive in the secularization movement in the Philippines. Pelaez was commissioned to draw up in 1852 by Governor General Antonio Urbiztondo reform proposals for the education system in the Philippines, the proposals was implemented in the Educational Decree of 1863. From 1861 to 1862 he was the author of articles in the newspaper El Catolico Filipino in which the ills in the society of the colony spoke openly and demanded equality of Filipinos in education and business.
On September 10, 1861, a royal decree was announced, which provided place the order of Filipino priests and parishes led by them are to be passed to the Order of Augustinian Recollects. Pelaez then wrote a protest note to the Governor General Jose Lemery, in which he threatened him to start a crusade, if the grant should be implemented. However Pelaez died, on 3 June 1963 without being able to complete his work, in an earthquake, in which the Cathedral of Manila was destroyed. He led at this time the Mass at the Cathedral.