The Devil Triumphant: Don Simeon Bernardo's Grave 2

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The statue has a heartbreaking origin. Its owner was a man called Simeon Bernardo. He was a middle-class Indio who lived during the late 1800s as Filipinos were fighting for their independence from Spain. At that time, Simeon was a young, devout, prayerful Catholic who managed a small fishpen at the mouth of the river to support his family and didn't care much for the revolution.

But just the same, Simeon was arrested, thrown into prison, and subjected to torture at the behest of the local (Spanish) priests, who suspected any Indio who ran a successful business of providing aid to the rebels. During his imprisonment Simeon had a change of heart. He began to question his faith as he tried to make sense of it in a suddenly chaotic world.

Shortly after Simeon's release the Americans arrived and "liberated" the Philippines. Ecclesiastical power was greatly reduced and Bibles were distributed and translated in the vernacular, in an almost deja vu experience of the Protestant Reformation in the 1600s. Simeon pounced upon this newfound freedom to study church doctrine and to read the Bible from cover to cover. As his knowledge grew, so did his hatred for the church. How could its priests, professed servants of God, be allied with the authorities who ordered the torture and murder of innocent men and women? The conclusion was inevitable. Simeon decided that the God the priests spoke of did not exist.

Don Simeon would live on and be the father of nine children. He devoted his life to atheism and made his children swear that they would never place any faith in God nor allow their children to do so. Some say that later in life, he recanted some of his hostile beliefs. But in a final act of defiance he commissioned a statue of the devil standing triumphant over Michael and ordered his children to place it on his grave after his death to remind society that darkness has taken over the world—the devil has won and there is no God.