FATHER Kim Margallo has lauded the support he got for the construction of the first St. Josemaria Escriva Mission Station Church in Barangay Apitong, Tacloban City.

The mission station church features a columbary and ossuary facility to house bone casket and cremated remains of the dead.

“The construction is going on. We have started the ground floor where the columbary is located,” said Margallo, the outgoing mission station priest-in-charge.

He added that the facility will serve as a dignified and cost-effective Catholic alternative to casket burial in the city and in the region.

To help finance the church construction, Margallo has been selling paintings, church vestments, and sculptures of statues aside from holding drive-in mass amid the pandemic.

He also hired two resident artists, Ernesto Kardante and Kim Clinton Gonzales, to do the commissioned paintings

Margallo, however, maintained that the columbary and ossuary are not for sale.

“Parishioners and interested individuals or family are invited to have a certain amount of donation to avail a columbary and ossuary vault. It is like you help us build our church and we give you a token of gratitude, depending on the amount you give. You can have either ossuary or columbary vault, and you can have that donation in installment,” Margallo told Sunstar Philippines.

Following its original site development plan in a one-hectare donated lot, the St. Josemaria Escriva Mission Station Church will be composed of several church edifices and structures “that will facilitate the services to be rendered by the church.”

It will also house the “first-class relic” of St. Josemaria Escriva.

The mission church launched its first pledging session through a donate-a-fence program in August 2018 while the construction of the main church started in December 2018.

Margallo earlier said they need at least P200 million to finish the entire mission church building.

“This will become a landmark, a shrine,” said Margallo. (SunStar Philippines)