A PRIEST called Louie Nacorda’s downtown aerie “Aula Angelorum”, or hall of angels. In a sense it is that and so much more for Louie. The place is a step back to his roots, downtown Parian where he spent part of his childhood; a place for taking a look back at memories he holds dear as well as a home for santoses and sacred images he has been collecting since 1977.
It was because his house could no longer hold all of his collections that he thought of renting this third floor aerie in Parian.
It is a large, airy studio apartment in one wall of which he has placed a collection of angel paintings from South America; other paintings from this collection serve as a divider between living and dining areas, both furnished in wooden antiques from all over the Philippines, wherever the peripatetic Louie found them. Opposite this wall is where he placed the only modern furniture, a bed, for the times when he would rather be basking in the ambience of the place than in his uptown home, which he deems a tad bit disorderly, compared to this neatly ordered space. And, of course, also modern amenities like an electric fan and a TV set.
Louie’s collection is not all antique. When he started, he set out to collect antiques of his favorite saints: the Santo Niño and His Blessed Mother, San Juan Bautista, San Antonio de Padua, St. Uriel (his particular guardian angel), and his mother’s favorite lady saints: St. Mary Magdalene, St. Philomena, St. Rita of Cassia. These days, it is not just antiques he collects, but also any statue or image that he finds beautiful (if the statues of his favorite saints are not up to his standard of beauty, he does not buy them). He then gets acquainted with the saint in that icon or image and develops a devotion to it.
Aside from his collection of large angel paintings, in this aerie, he has placed a figure of San Isidro Labrador someone found in an abandoned chapel in the hills of Minglanilla; several Santo Niño statues including that of the Child Jesus with His playmate, San Juan de Bautista, both recently acquired; some heads of saints bought at a time when it was a fashion to buy just heads and hands.
Other statues include the Blessed Mother and the angel Gabriel (Anunciation), a miniature Pieta, and other sacred objects that make this such an interesting place — especially if Louie is around to discuss how he acquired them or what they are and the devotions to them.
Also in this aerie is a bookcase filled with all Filipino books, an offshoot of his being a member of Hambin, an organization of the first batch of graduates of a special University of San Carlos Cebuano Studies Center post graduate course on Cebu history, heritage and culture. This batch, Mayette Tabada refers to as the “memory warriors,” a term which fits Louie, who finds himself a keeper of sacred memoirs and mores.
