Fr. Godo: School and Parish Builder

You will always be remembered!

Fr. Godofredo was born in the quaint little Holland town of Volkel (pop. 1700), in the province of North Brabant, on February 10, 1883 to Aloysius Aldenhuijsen and Dorotea Spierings. Godofredo Aldenhuijsen was brought up in a large Catholic family of eighteen children, seven of whom entered the religious life.

At the age of 14, young Godofredo entered the Minor Seminary of St. Michels Gestel, North Brabant and later joined the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary [CICM] at Scheut on September 7, 1903. He took his philosophy at the Mother House in Scheut and his Theology at the Jesuit Theological Seminary in Louvain.

At the age of 26, on July 18,1909, Godofredo Aldenhuijsen was ordained a priest of God at the seminary in Scheut with Msgr. Van Ronsle as the officiating prelate. Barely three months after ordination, the new priest, together with 7 Belgian missionaries, boarded a steam-powered train in Brussels for Genoa, a trip which took some 24 hours, as the train sliced through the borders of Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy. At Genoa the missionary entourage unpacked their bags in the comfortable cabins of the German ocean liner, "Princess Alice", of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Lines for their four-week voyage to Hong Kong - then to the Philippines.

Father Godofredo first set foot on Philippine soil in October, 1909. But Paco was not to be his first assignment. In the morning of October 23, 1909, after spending his first night in the country at an old house on 2020 Herran [Pedro Gil Street], Father Godofredo boarded a train at the old wooden station in Paco for his first taste of missionary work: to teach in a school in Cavite.

During the first 50 years of his priesthood, he was made parish priest of San Roque in June, 1910. After. a year he was transferred as assistant parish priest in Pasig, Rizal [now Pasig City]. His first assignment to become parish priest of Paco came on September 7, 1912. He was to remain there for 7 years. In 1919, he was reassigned to Pasig, this time as parish priest. Completing his first 13 years in the Philippines in April, 1922, his superior sent him to Sparrendaal, Holland, to serve as procurator of one of the study houses. He returned to the Philippines in July, 1924, to become once more parish priest of Pasig. Then he was made Provincial Superior of the Congregation from July 15, 1925 to August, 1930. In March, 1931, he returned to Paco.

Even the briefest review of Father Godofredo's life, however, shows the builder in the man. First he built the Paco rectory in 1916 where the St. John's Building now stands. Then for two years, 1931 to 1933, he built the concrete church of Paco, complete with two towers. In 1934 he broke ground for the Paco Catholic School building, the new rectory, and a convent for the Sisters of the Missionary Canonesses of St. Augustine. In 1938, having completed a year-by-year expansion of what used to be only an elementary school, Father Godofredo witnessed the first High School Commencement Exercises of Paco Catholic School.

Fr. Godofredo continued to stay in Paco even after the other CICM Fathers and ICM Sisters have taken over the administration of the School and the Parish. He also celebrated mass in the small chapel in what used to be the Sisters' Convent and the in the parish church. He died peacefully in the morning of July 20, 1976. He was initially buried in the CICM cemetery in Pasig City. His remains were transferred beneath his bust in the church patio and now in the high school quadrangle.

Edited from the Golden Jubilee Book by Reynaldo A. Mones '71. Comments, corrections and suggestions are welcome.