Father Efren Borromeo, or Father Momoy to those closest to him, says he's always had special abilities throughout most of his life, but things really kicked into high gear when he had a near death experience in 1994.
While on the road from Manila to Bicol, somebody threw a rock that shattered the windshield of the car he was riding. Pieces of glass hit his face, particularly his right eye, which was almost torn off its socket. There was blood everywhere and the last thing he remembers was feeling searing pain that was “like a toothache multiplied a thousand times.”
That was the first wave. The next wave, Father Borromeo felt his body go numb all over. And then, the final wave was an overall feeling that he described as pleasant and satisfying.
“Parang kinakalong ako,” he says. “Sabi ko, ang sarap. And then, suddenly, I saw myself na nasa labas, duguan. My companions and family members were all crying. My niece who was a nurse was saying she couldn’t feel a pulse.
“I found out later I ‘died’ for about 10 to 15 minutes,” he adds.
PHOTO: PJ Cana
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Suddenly, Father Borromeo could feel a presence behind him. That’s when he realized his time was up. He heard himself say, “Sige, bahala ka na,” thinking that he was going to be moving on.
“Hanggang ngayon nagsisisi ako na sinabi ko yun,” he says. “Kasi binalik ako. Suddenly I could feel the pain again. I kept thinking about the shattered windshield and how much it would cost to have it repaired.”
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Soon after that incident, Father Borromeo started experiencing his ‘gifts’—he claims to be able to see inside a person’s body and identify diseases and medical conditions; he has the power to heal and even, on some occasions, bring a person back to life from the dead; and he can also communicate with the souls of the departed.
All this has led to him becoming something of a “celebrity.” His story has been told in previous newspaper and magazine articles; journalist Jessica Soho has documented his life in her show on GMA; and his life story has been told on the drama anthology series Maalala Mo Kaya.
Today he lives a quiet life on a sprawling farm that he named Mary’s Healing Sanctuary in Brgy. Lidong, Sto. Domingo, Albay. There is a small chapel in the farm, a gazebo that’s being given the finishing touches, and an open-air dining hall where asks me to sit down and have lunch with him. I was staying at a resort about an hour away for a separate business trip but decided to pay the man a visit after hearing about his story.
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Father Momoy
Father Borromeo has two birthdays. His real date of birth is March 4, 1951, but the date on his birth certificate is May 4, which he says is his father’s decision—or fault. He was a breech baby, but to hear him say it, it sounds like everybody else in the world born the “normal” way are the ones who are “abnormal.”
“Kasi kung bababa ka sa sasakyan, hindi naman ulo mauuna, ‘di ba?” he grins. “Paa muna.”
Back then, older people in his hometown of Tiwi, Albay, believed that breech babies were blessed with special abilities, such as curing people who accidentally swallow fishbones.
“Bata pa lang ako, I remember may mga pinapapunta sakin na mga natinik,” he says.
People also believed back then that breech babies were an effective repellent against crop pests like locusts. So, as a kid, farmers would sometimes bring him to rice fields to ward off the pesky insects. He says he earned a share of the profits from the crops, sometimes even more than his brothers who worked as harvesters in the field.
In college he answered a call for scholarships for young men to go into the priesthood, and he became a full-fledged priest at 29 years old. He developed an interest in the medical field and underwent trainings for basic medical procedures like suturing, injecting liquids into the body, and how to use equipment like stethoscopes.
As a priest, one of his first assignments was in Batan Island in Rapu-Rapu, Albay. The island had a small community but no police force, no doctors, no hospitals, and so it wasn’t long before the townsfolk looked to Father Borromeo for help for the most random of things.
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One time during the town fiesta, Father Borromeo was awakened at around 3 a.m. by a knock on the door. Someone had been stabbed in the abdomen.
“He was drunk and naghamon daw ng away,” he recalls. “Ayun, sinaksak.”
Father Borrmeo initially asked if he was going to bless the hapless victim, which he assumed was already dead, but he was told the man was still alive. So he went over and saw the man writhing in pain, with his guts quite literally spilling out. For some reason, people had sprinkled salt on the open wound.
PHOTO: PJ Cana
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“Una kong ginawa, binigyan ko sya ng makakagat, tapos hinugasan ko yung sugat para matanggal yung asin,” he says. “Then, pinasok ko yung bituka tapos tinahi ko. After ko tahiin, pinahatid ko sa Tabako, Albay, which was around three hours away kasi dun may hospital.”
For a brief moment as he played doctor, Father Borromeo forgot that he was a priest. Just before the man was whisked away he called him back to hear his confession before finally sending him off.
The man survived and often acted as Father Borromeo’s bodyguard after he recovered, to protect him from the “crazies.”
“’E ikaw ang number one loko-loko-dito e,’” Father Borromeo told him.
The priest has several other stories about the intersection of medicine and spirituality in his vocation. There was a time when he blessed a mixture of coconut water, salt, and regular water to give to a patient who was clearly dehydrated. During his next mass people brought bottles of their own water for him to bless, believing it to be a kind of “magic cure-all.” Then there was another time he was awakened in the middle of the night by a man who said his wife was sick. Father Borromeo hurriedly got dressed and went with the man. They had been walking for almost 30 minutes when the priest asked the man what was wrong with his wife. It turns out she was pregnant and her water just broke.
“Sabi ko, ‘Bakit ako ang tinawag mo?! Tumawag ka ng midwife o komadrona. Pag pinanganak na, saka mo ko tawagan para binyagan ko.’”
But the most memorable incident that established Father Borromeo’s reputation as a healer was when he was asked to perform last rites to a man who was on his deathbed. When he got to the house, he saw people working on the man’s coffin. The priest was told that the man had just been waiting for him before he finally succumbed to his illness and died.
He was invited to merienda before he left the house. But about halfway through his journey back home, someone caught up to him breathless and excited—the man father Borromeo had just blessed and who they all watched die, had apparently come back to life.
“Kaya kapag dumadaan ako dun, I would say, ‘O, Mang Eliong, kamusta po kayo?’ Sagot nya, ‘Mabuti naman, Father. Sabi ko, ‘Asan na yung kabaong mo? Sabi niya, ‘Andiyan Father. Gusto mo sa ‘yo na?’”
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'Momoy Resonance Imagine'
After his near-death experience in Sariaya, Father Borromeo’s abilities became even more pronounced. People would approach him after mass and oftentimes, he could “see” inside their bodies and could usually tell them what was wrong with them. The priest could not explain exactly how he was able to do what he does, but because he had a lot of questions, it led him to study further and pursue a doctorate degree on Applied Cosmic Anthroplogy.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Ewan ko,” he laughs. “It’s anthropology, but on a cosmic perspective.”
Father Borromeo familiarized himself with medical terms and learned basic anatomy, being able to identify body parts and learning to tell if an internal organ isn’t quite working as it’s supposed to using what he calls his own version of MRI: Momoy’s Resonance Imaging. Unlike an X-Ray which is in black and white and two-dimensional, his “gift” allows him to see inside a person in color.
“Kaya yung mga walang masyadong pambayad sa MRI, pinapatingnan sa ‘kin,” he says. “Nakikita ko naman.”
I ask him how accurate his Momoy-R.I. is compared to the actual MRI.
“Sometimes, it’s more accurate than the actual MRI. Most of the time, it’s more accurate than a biopsy,” he says. “Bakit more accurate? Kasi, yung biopsy, ‘pag kukuha ka ng tissue sa organ, iba na kasi yung situation ng tissue sa loob ng katawan mo kesa sa labas. Kasi pag sa loob ng katawan, dinadaluyan yan ng dugo, oxygen, ng electrical impulses. Kapag nilabas na yan, nilagay sa dish, tapos titingnan mo sa miscroscope, iba na ang sitwasyon.
“Ang tawag ko dito cognosis, not diagnosis,” he adds. “It’s like, consciousness, plus -gnosis, or knowing. So compassionate knowing.”
The priest asks me about Deal or No Deal, the old TV game show where a contestant needs to guess what’s inside a set of briefcases in order to find the one carrying the grand prize, which was often in the millions of pesos. Watching the show on TV, he says he could actually “see” inside the briefcases and could guess, every time, where the jackpot money was hidden.
He says he was actually invited to play the game one time as a contestant by then-ABS-CBN chairman Gabby Lopez, before he realized he didn’t want the burden of winning all that money, which would probably be gone quickly anyway after he gives everyone their “balato” or a piece of the winnings.
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“Di ba success is relative,” he says. “The more success you have, the more relatives you have.”
On a more serious note, Father Borromeo says he’s established relationships with actual doctors and medical professionals, who often refer their patients to him, just as he refers his “healees” to them.
During the pandemic, his face-to-face consultations were considerably lessened, but he said he worked around it through virtual conferencing like Zoom.
“Monday and Wednesday usually ginagawa ko,” he says. “Naghe-healing ako. General muna, and then we go into breakout rooms, one by one, or family by family.”
He says there has been plenty of testimonies from the people he claims to have healed.
“There was one from New York, may cancer. Na-heal siya after several sessions,” he says. “Ganun din yung isa sa L.A. There’s one from Japan, matagal nang walang anak, nagka-anak. Those are just some of the cases.”
What exactly does he do to “heal” people?
“Wala naman. I just pray over them,” he says. “After the mass, magpe-pray over ako. Hindi ko naman nalalaman kung paano sila naghe-heal, kasi hindi naman ako ang naghe-heal. Nire-refer ko lang naman sa Kanya.” He points up.
PHOTO: PJ Cana
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Talking to the dead
Our chat is interrupted by lunch. I am invited to eat with Father Borromeo and his companions in the farm. He talks about his programs for the environment, which he says is one of his core advocacies, including a campaign to get quarry operators and miners out of the vicinity of Mayon Volcano. He also has programs involving bamboo as a food source, and coral regenesis.
“Do you remember Philip Pestaño?” he asks me between bites of fish and rice. The name is vaguely familiar. Later on, after a quick Google search, I find out he was the Philippine Navy officer who allegedly died by suicide in 1995. But the case was controversial because the victim’s parents claim he was murdered by his superiors.
“Binisita nya ko,” Father Borromeo says. “The day after (the incident) happened, nagpakita siya sa ‘kin. He told me that he didn’t commit suicide.”
Coincidentally (or maybe not), the priest met a group of nuns—one of whom was Pestaño’s aunt—a few days later at a church in Quezon City. The nun was talking about her nephew and how he had recently died.
“Bigla akong napasabat,” Father Borromeo said. “Sabi ko, hindi po siya nag-suicide, pinatay po sya. I said, ‘Ang pangalan ng pamangkin mo, Philip Pestaño, di po ba?’ Nagpunta sa table ko yung madre and halos kaladkarin ako papunta sa bahay ng pamangkin niya.”
At the Pestaño home, Father Borromeo met Ensign Pestaño’s parents. They couldn’t believe what the priest in front of them was saying about their son. The father had even expressed anger and asked Father Borromeo why he was meddling in the case.
But the priest was insistent. He pointed out inconsistencies with the Navy’s statements and the evidence at hand, including the alleged suicide that was addressed to “Dear Parents,” and the handwriting and grammatical errors in the note that didn’t sound like the victim who was a poet and studied in Ateneo De Manila University. There was forensic evidence too, including the bullet that entered through the victim’s head that seemed awkward and impossible for someone to do to himself, and the fact that there were no traces of gunpowder on Pestaño’s hands, proving that he didn’t pull the trigger.
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Of course, Father Borromeo says he heard all of this from Pestaño himself from beyond the grave.
Weren’t you afraid of seeing his ghost? I ask.
“Nasanay na rin,” he says. “Almost every day at 3 a.m, since my near-death experience, andami nang nagpapakita sa ‘king mga kaluluwa.”
From skeptic to believer?
I consider myself a skeptic and would be the first to roll my eyes at stories of people claiming to have supernatural abilities. So going in to chat with him, I had chosen to take everything Father Borromeo said with the proverbial grain of salt.
Until I ask him to describe for me exactly what he sees when he “examines” patients who come to him for help. He looks me over for a second and says, “Kamusta ang acid reflux mo?”
My jaw drops to the floor and I look at the other people at the table in total bewilderment. I had been dealing with severe acid reflux and gastrophageal reflux disease (GERD) for quite some time, and for Father Borromeo to identify and “diagnose” me after just a few seconds was mind-boggling.
“Meron kayong duodenal ulcer,” he says. “Yung sa duodenum ninyo. Pagpasok sa stomach, esophagus, stomach, yung duodenum, manipis na manipis na po ‘yun. Yun ang nagti-trigger ng acid reflux.”
I have no idea what he just said but I make a mental note to see a doctor as soon as I get home.
“Hindi ko alam kung paano,” when I ask how he was able to do it. “Hindi ko naman yan pinag-aralan. Gusto ko ito malaman kung paano, kaya nag doctorate po ako. Para masagot ang mga tanong. Ang problema ko, pagkatapos kong mag-aral mas marami akong tanong. I have more questions than answers and sometimes I even question the answers.”
I ask him what he has to say to all the skeptics out there who don’t believe in his “abilities.”
“Hindi naman ako nasasaktan,” he says. “Kasi ang number one na skeptic ay ako. Kaya ako nag-aral ng doctorate. Pero hanggang ngayon hindi ko pa rin maintindihan. Kapag may pumipila sa akin, nagtataka ako kung bakit pabalik-balik sila sa ‘kin. Kasi, hindi ko po talaga alam kung ano at saan siya galing.
“Kagaya mo, hindi ko naman alam na may ganun ka,” he tells me.
I just look at him and nod, as much in agreement as in amazement.
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