1 | N.C. Alegre OF CHURCH BELLS AND MONUMENTS: THE HIDDEN STORY OF THE MASONIC SYMBOL ON THE FAÇADE OF OUR LADY OF THE CANDLE CHURCH IN PARACALE, CAMARINES NORTE, PHILIPPINES Noel Cornel Alegre Institute for Development Studies (CUREXO-IDS), Capitol University nc_alegre@g.cu.edu.ph; noelalegre@yahoo.com Abstract This short study started from a personal encounter with the church structure of Ntra. Sra. de Candelaria in the sleepy mining town of Paracale, Camarines Norte in 2010. It led to the uncovering of symbols etched on the façade of the local church that are significant to local history. The church bells and images on the facade elicited questions as to why the church bell is colored blue, why the church has a triangular encised emblem, and what the garbled spanish word mean? To answer this curiosity, reflexivity (as a concept and method) was used while gathering primary and secondary materials which also formed the way the findings were framed. This study found out that the bell was one of the last minted bells by H. Sunico (1872-1937), one of the Filipino bell casters. The earlier renovation of the church’s façade hid the identity of one of its earlier secular parish priests, Don Jose Clemente Rosales. At the hight of the revolution, the church’s façade was probably used by the Katiponeros, who were mostly Masons, in the promotion of their cause against the Spanish colonizers by locating on it their incised triangular emblem. These answers to my questions may clarify some issues in the local religious history of Paracale and the province of Camarines Norte that might further contribute to the significance of the local heritage. Introduction “…[H]istory of religions ceases to be a museum of fossils, ruins, and obsolete merabilia and becomes what is should have been from the beginning for any investigator: a series of ‘messages’ waiting to be deciphered and understood” (Eliade in Comstock, 1971:57). Colonial churches elsewhere in Asia and the Americas are distinctly unique. They display the blend of the local culture with the European architecture making it totally different from all other structures. Although the Philippines developed almost