BIOGRAPHY

The Author

With his extensive body of work, he occupies a solid place in Philippine literature in English and Spanish and the rarefied field of Catholic poetry. Critics have described his poetry as a conscience that attacks and spares no one except the weak. It is full of intrinsic insights into humanity and its connection with a greater being. His work explores the relationship between man and his Creator, between space and time, and between the earthly and heavenly continuums of life, alongside our overwhelming shared sense of love, courage and hope.

Gilbert Luis R. Centina III, award-winning poet and author, was born on May 19, 1947, in La Carlota City, the Philippines and died a victim of the coronavirus on May 1, 2020, in León, Spain. He was a Filipino American religious missionary of the Order of Saint Augustine.

In 1964, he entered the Augustinian monastery in the historic district of Intramuros, Manila. He later attended the University of Santo Tomás, the Philippines' pontifical and royal university.

In 1972,
he was named the most distinguished
alumnus in the field of journalism by the La Carlota City High School, his alma mater, during its silver jubilee.

Archbishop (later Cardinal) Jaime
L. Sin ordained him a priest on June 28, 1975, at the Manila Cathedral. That same year, the town council of Calinog, Iloilo, approved a resolution making him an adopted son of his father's hometown.

His first novel, Wages of Sin, was published in 1988 in Honolulu as a limited edition. The roman à clef was written under a nom de plume. In 2013, he published Rubrics and Runes, under his real name. This controversial novel is an attack on clericalism, simony, sexual abuse, and financial shenanigans perpetrated by some misguided churchmen.

Augustinian author Gilbert Luis R. Centina III was a leading voice in Catholic poetry. He died on May 1, 2020, due to complications from Covid-19.

He wrote nine poetry books, two novels, a book of literary criticism, and hundreds of newspaper columns. He won numerous recognitions and awards for his literary work. The last seven years of his life saw an explosion of frenetic creativity resulting in the publication of seven poetry books, a novel, and a literary criticism.

Respected for his poetry, his poems have been included in various textbooks and anthologies on Philippine literature in English and published in the Philippines, Spain, Canada, and the United States. Besides English, he wrote in Spanish and two Philippine languages, Hiligaynon and Tagalog.

He fought to preserve Spanish as a cultural language in the Philippines, asserting that the tongue forms the core of his homeland's soul. He supported the work of Hispanists to "spread, defend and exalt" the language in that country. From this noble struggle, he derived his inspiration to write bilingual poetry books in Spanish and English. The Philippines, it can be recalled, formed a treasured part of the Spanish Empire for more than three centuries.

For his body of poetic work in Spanish which over the years "has become an anthroponymic treasure, memory of parishioners, companions, and friends who give a title to a fresco of earthly life, with its glories and miseries...," he was posthumously awarded the Premio José Rizal de last Letras Filipinas 2020.

As a testament to his importance as a writer, he was included among the most notable Augustinian men and women since the founding of the Augustinian Order in 1244 in a seminal encyclopedia compiled and edited by a Spanish author and academic, Rafael Lazcano, arguably the foremost expert on the Augustinian Order in the world today. The encyclopedia, Tesauro Agustiniano, also includes members of the Augustinian Recollects since their founding in 1588 and those of the women branches of the Augustinian religious family.

He was assigned to different missions abroad, including New York City, where he became the first pastor of Filipino ancestry at Holy Rosary Church in Spanish Harlem from 2007 to 2010. Fr. Gilbert, whose Ilonggo parents settled in Belleville, NJ, after emigrating from the Philippines, also volunteered as a missionary in Iquitos, Peru (1976-77).

As a celebrated Catholic author and poet, his accolades include the Palanca Memorial Awards, the Philippines’ highest literary honor, in English poetry (1974), the Focus Literary Awards in English poetry (1982), and the Catholic Authors Award (1996) from the Archdiocese of Manila, then under Cardinal Jaime L. Sin, and from the Asian Catholic Publishers.

He went to the University of Santo Tomas (UST), where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree before graduating cum laude in all his ecclesiastical degrees: Bachelor of Philosophy, Bachelor of Sacred Theology, and Licentiate of Sacred Theology.

In 1969, he won the top honors in English poetry and short fiction in the UST Annual Rector's Literary Prizes. He made history when he became the first seminarian to serve as literary editor of The Varsitarian, the university's official student publication. From 1972 until 1986, he served as literary editor of Homelife, the Philippines' Catholic magazine.

In 1976, he earned a Master of Arts degree in comparative literature from the University of the Philippines. He later completed the coursework toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature at another state university but did not submit a dissertation due to a new assignment that required him to relocate.

He attended the UP National Writers Workshop in 1976, two years after he had won a fellowship to the 1974 Silliman National Summer Writers Workshop, where he was followed by his elder brother Romeo and his younger sibling Pierce also as writing fellows, becoming the first triumvirate of poet brothers to be accepted to the annual event, a record in Philippine literary history that stands to this day. He was a member of the UP Writers Club and a charter member of the National Writers Union of the Philippines, today's Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL).

While a student at UST, he became the editor of a youth magazine (Coed) and a weekly news magazine (Now) staff member. During his novitiate, he contributed poetry, short fiction, and articles to The Chronicle Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Saturday Mirror Magazine, Weekly Nation, Impact, Weekly Graphic, Philippines Free Press, and Solidarity while teaching religion at Santa Rosa College in Makati.

He returned to Homelife in 2004, when it marked its fiftieth anniversary, to receive a citation for his contributions to the magazine.

Shortly after returning from Peru, he was appointed parochial vicar of San José Parish in Iloilo City in 1978. He renovated the church and the parish recreation and bowling center when he became parish treasurer. He taught literature at the University of the Philippines (Iloilo campus) and at the Pius XII Institute of Catechetical and Social Studies under the Archdiocese of Jaro, which also assigned him as chaplain of Apostolatus Maris.

He wrote a weekly column for Yuhum, a leading weekly magazine in Hiligaynon in Western Visayas.

In 1983, he was briefly assigned to the monastery that administers the Santo Niño Basilica Minore in Cebu, where he created a library for the religious community and managed the museum.

His final assignment in the Philippines was as chaplain of Colegio San Agustín - Makati from 1990 until 2005 when he moved to the United States.

Throughout his years in Spain, he served in the Augustinian houses of Neguri and the Colegio Andrés de Urdaneta in Loui, near Bilbao, from April 2013 until July 2019. His last assignment was at Colegio de Nuestra Madre del Buen Consejo in León.

Born on May 19, 1947, in La Carlota City, in the central Philippine province of Negros Occidental, he was the second child of Luis T. Centina Jr., an educator, and Eva Gómez Ramos, a homemaker. His great-grandfather, Samuel Salas Ramos, a sugarcane farmer with vast landholdings, was named the first Filipino judge of La Carlota, breaking a long line of Spanish and American judges under the Spanish and later American colonial regimes.

In 1980, the city of Iloilo tapped him to chair the publicity committee of Dinagyang. This annual religious-cultural event attracts tourists from far and wide. While assigned as treasurer of San José Church, he galvanized the parishioners, led by sisters Dolores and Guadalupe Lacson and Angelita Mossman, to renovate the church and the bowling center run by the parish.

While in Iloilo, he composed the lyrics of the diamond jubilee hymn of the University of San Agustin, which was put to music by Fr. Santiago Ezcurra, OSA, dean of the university's music conservatory.

Through the invitation of Kerima Polotan-Tuvera, a literary figure and editor of the Evening Post, he wrote a column for the newspaper under a pseudonym at the end of the 1980s. Throughout the 1990s, he penned the widely-read column "Silver Linings" in People's Tonight. Also, he wrote another column for Philippine Newsday under a pseudonym.

Following the ouster from power of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1986, he went to Hawaii and spiritually ministered to the former leader, his wife Imelda, and their household staff for over a year. Political pressure on some Honolulu prelates led them to prohibit priests from performing religious services for the Marcoses at the time.

Years later, in 2001, he was asked by Philippine President Joseph Estrada to introduce him before a massive prayer rally in Manila to show support for the beleaguered leader.

Upon his return to the Philippines from Hawaii in 1988, he was assigned to Convento de San Agustín in Intramuros. He ministered to hardcore prisoners at the National Bilibid Prisons on his initiative, going there weekly. In 1990, he was appointed chaplain and chair of the Christian Formation Team of Colegio San Agustin-Makati, with added responsibilities as editor of Search, an Augustinian journal, and publicity officer of the school community.

He improved and expanded the annual student diary, published books by fellow friars, and launched a yearly writing contest for the best research on St. Augustine. A regular Mass in Spanish was added to the schedule on his initiative. With the help of benefactors, he shepherded the renovation of the altar, the presbytery, the tabernacle, the confessional chapel of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, and the shrine of the Santo Niño. The gardens by the chapel were turned into a mini-park.

A well-traveled writer, he visited many places in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, and Asia, including Tibet. He rediscovered his Spanish roots in Spain, where he began producing bilingual poetry collections, and where he found a receptive and expanding audience.

Two weeks before his death, he completed his final work, Recovecos/Crevices, his third bilingual poetry collection, consisting of 350 poems in Spanish and English.

In his preface to this book, which turned out to be prescient, if ironic, foreboding of his mortality, he wrote: “The new coronavirus has rewritten the rules of daily life, and even our most sophisticated technologies seem powerless to stop it. as we descend into a dystopian world where no one is sure how all this will end,” adding, “this collection of poetry is my gift to those who survived the pandemic and my tribute to those who fought well and died."

With Manila Archbishop (later cardinal) Jaime L. Sin at the Manila Cathedral after his ordination to the priesthood in 1975.

From the Asian Catholic Publishers and the Archdiocese of Manila under Jaime Cardinal L. Sin, he received the Catholic Authors Award in 1996, which he considered his most treasured recognition, along with his selection as one of the outstanding chaplains of the Philippines by the Knights of Columbus at the turn of the new millennium in 2000.

His books

• Recovecos/Crevices (2020)
• Plus ultra y otros poemas/Plus Ultra and Other Poems (2020)
• Madre España and Illustrated Poems (2019)
• Spiritual Quest in Verse (2017)
• Diptych/Díptico (2017)
• Getxo and Other Poems (2014)
• Triptych and Collected Poems (2013)
• Somewhen (2013)
• Wages of in (1988)
• Glass of Liquid Truths (1974; 1979; 2013)
• Our Hidden Galaxette (1970; 2013)

His inspiration

His paternal grandparents were lovers of education. His grandmother, a schoolteacher, and his grandfather, a land surveyor, saw to it that every single one of their children earned a college education. His artistic bent comes from a childhood surrounded with charcoal etchings by his maternal grandfather.

He came from a family of artists. His father, an educator, contributed articles to national magazines in the Philippines and authored a posthumously published book, Almost on the Carpet. One of his two younger sisters is a painter, while two of his four brothers are poets. In 2001, the State of New Jersey honored his father with a certificate of recognition for his valiant efforts in the Asiatic-Pacific War Theater as a combat intelligence and counter-intelligence officer during World War II under the United States Army Forces Far East and the organized guerrilla movement against the invading Japanese Imperial Army.

His artistic bent comes from a childhood surrounded with charcoal etchings by his maternal grandfather Eliodoro Ramos, an amateur painter who studied law while serving in the U.S. Navy and being deployed at the Panama Canal and Annapolis, Maryland in the 1920s.

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