She looks down on her children with sadness, with compassion. She holds the Baby Jesus with one arm and clasps his hand in hers on the other as He reaches down to a child who is clinging to her skirt. Our Lady of Hope of Palo, a symbol of hope for and empathy with people who have lost so much, stood under whipping wind and rain with Pope Francis as he delivered his homily in Tacloban on January 17, 2015.
The Pope was said to have abandoned his prepared homily and instead spoke spontaneously from his heart.
“So many of you have lost everything. I don’t know what to say to you. But the Lord does know what to say to you. Some of you have lost part of your families. All I can do is keep silence and walk with you all. Christ understands us because he underwent all the trials that we, that you, have experienced. And beside the cross was his Mother. We are like a little child in the moments when we have so much pain and no longer understand anything. All we can do is grab hold of her hand firmly and say ‘Mommy’—like a child does when it is afraid. It is perhaps the only word we can say in difficult times: ‘Mommy…’ We are not alone.”
Among those who were moved to tears was ecclesiastical artist Willy Layug, founder of Betis Galeria and renowned sculptor across the Catholic Church and the nation. He was the artist that sculpted the wooden image that stood silent and resolute beside Pope Francis.
“When the Pope said that we must cling to our Mother just like the Filipino child at her feet, holding on to her skirt, I almost fell to my knees because I was very emotional,” Willy says.
It was a homily that moved Filipinos to tears, those who were there at the Mass and those at home watching and witnessing the people of Tacloban who had miraculously survived both Typhoon Yolanda and the untold losses they had suffered.
Our Lady of Hope in the Cathedral of Our Lord’s Transfiguration in Palo, Leyte.
PORTRAYING HOPE
For Willy, the Pope’s visit brought a different kind of a test. Even though he had been an ecclesiastical artist whose works are venerated by churchgoers across the country through decades, this was something else. Because how does one portray sympathy and hope?
Almost 7,000 people had lost their lives and tens of thousands more were injured when Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit the coastal towns of Leyte and Cebu. The massive devastation it left in its wake was witnessed by the world, including by the Pope. “When I saw from Rome that catastrophe… On those very days I decided to come here. I am here to be with you—a little bit late, but I’m here. I have come to tell you that Jesus is Lord. And He never lets us down,” Pope Francis said.
As religious iconography goes, statues are made to inspire devotion and to reflect the saints’ spiritual roles. St. Francis of Asisi, for example, is often portrayed accompanied by animals such as birds, wolves or deer to highlight his role as patron saint of animals.
Willy had spent hundreds of hours with this piece of wood he was going to turn into Our Lady of Hope, carving every contour of her face and every fold of her dress. He knew the Virgin Mary had to look local and he depicted her wearing a terno, the sleeves painted to look like they were embroidered with gold thread. Around her dress is a violet tapis with flowers. Standing at five feet tall, she is perched on a two-foot globe, but instead of the usual clouds at her feet, there are waves. The Child Jesus in her arms is giving a rosary to the Filipino child in tattered clothes at His Mother’s feet.
The child looks like the thousands of children surrounded by the wreckage of the typhoon: lost, downcast, alone.
BETIS WOOD CARVING
Betis is famous for wood carving and furniture. From the most expensive mansions in Europe to ancestral homes around the Philippines, you’d find these artists’ works stamped on wood.
“Maybe it’s in our DNA,” Willy says when asked where he got the skill and predilection for wood carving.
His grandfather was a wood carver and his father built fishing boats. Among Willy’s own seven children, only one has followed in his footsteps and pursued a career in the arts: the youngest child Joseph. But he has many more “children” from Pampanga—the artist members of his guild MASU or Mandukit Artesano Santa Ursula.
“Santa Ursula is our barangay, it’s a village. I was born there and Juan Flores, the father of Betis wood carving, was also born there. All of my guild members say that since they were children, they knew how to carve. Maybe it’s because our barangay is just one kilometer from the district of Betis. We don’t know where it came from or why Betis became home to so many talented wood carvers.”
He adds that when locals like him were young, they were forced “to learn wood carving because it’s the most viable industry for us—for Betis, for Santa Ursula.”
Willy was not your typical wood carver when he was growing up. “At the time, our place was not that successful, but I’m lucky and I’m blessed to finish high school and college. All my contemporaries in elementary did not go to high school because they started right away working as wood carvers.”
His classmates’ parents would ask him, “Why are you still studying? You can earn five pesos a day!” Willy’s answer was simple: his mom had higher dreams for him when she saw that he was very good at drawing. They wanted him to be an architect but he admits that he wasn’t so fond of the mathematics that came along with design.
“I had a dilemma when I was about to finish. Was I a painter or a sculptor? I didn’t finish my thesis because my wife and I eloped and we had started our own family then.”
In 2016, UST would let him finish his thesis and he graduated with his youngest son Josef. Father and son walked in their togas; his wife Baby beside them. Many in the audience thought that he was just walking his son during the ceremony at the UST Gymnasium.
“People said, ‘Ay, pasang-awa,’” Willy laughs.
Then, of course, whispers went around the gymnasium that he was actually the artist who had made Our Lady of Hope for Tacloban and the Crucified Christ that was onstage at the Pope’s last Mass in UST during his visit the year before.
The first time Willy left UST in 1983, he found himself at a fork in the road: Would he become a sculptor, something he had been doing since he was a child growing up at Santa Ursula, or would he become a painter? “If I chose painting, I would have to make a name for myself from scratch and compete with thousands of visual artists in Manila.”
So he chose the road less traveled in the art world, but in Pampanga, he would have to prove himself against the best of them.
The Fort Santiago bas-relief art prototype
The Fort Santiago bas-relief art final product
The Betis Galleria as it opened in 1991.
In his studio continuously working on his practice.
In his apprenticeship with Francisco Romero Zafra in Cordoba, Spain, in 2010
In his apprenticeship in Spain with sculptor Jose Antonio Arteaga.