Marita PanganMARITA Pangan’s faith was shaken when she first realized that she wasn’t the biggest fish in the ocean. Why, she wasn’t even a minnow in the turbid pond that was St. Celestina’s Convent School. She was twelve years old and would be a boarder there, an interna (boarding school student) away from home, which was in San Miguel, Bulacan. Her middle-aged parents had driven with her to Manila in the 1961 Buick that rarely ventured farther than Malolos or Obando.
Marita had been the fruit of seven years of prayerful dancing in supplication to the sacred and fecund ménage a trois of Sta. Clara, San Pascual de Baylon and La Virgen del Salambao. For good measure, her Inang and Itay had worn their kneecaps down during those barren years, with a concatenation of novenas to La Virgen dela
