Isabelo Caiban Abarquez

Isabelo Caiban Abarquez was born on July 8, 1956, in Panlaan, Dumanjug, Cebu, the second of ten children of Isabelo Abarquez Sr. and Purificacion Cornejo. He studied at Pope John XXIII Minor Seminary, San Carlos Seminary College for philosophy, and the Seminario Mayor de San Carlos for theology, all in Cebu City. He was ordained a priest on June 23, 1987. His posts included professor, then spiritual director, then rector of San Carlos Seminary-College. The Cebu archdiocese page for him exists in two contradictory versions and is unreliable on its own: the version carried as the roster's from_source gives his birth year as 1951, calls him the fourth bishop of Calbayog, and attributes his 2007 Calbayog appointment to Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005; the contemporary Samar News report and the roster give 1956, the tenth bishop, and the appointment under Benedict XVI, and those govern here. No ordaining bishop is shipped: the Cebu page names Rosales for the correct 1987 date, while Wikipedia names Vidal, and the contemporary report names none. No motto is shipped: the Cebu page gives Ut Vitam Habeant, from John 10:10, while Wikipedia gives Regnare Christum Volumus, and no contemporary source settles the conflict.

On December 27, 2002, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Cebu, and he was consecrated on February 18, 2003, at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral. On June 19, 2004, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Palo, where he served as parish priest of Sts. Peter and Paul in Ormoc and then of Sto. Nino. On January 5, 2007, he was appointed the tenth Bishop of Calbayog, succeeding Jose Palma, who had held Calbayog from 1999 to 2006 before his transfer to Palo; the appointment was announced in Calbayog on the evening of January 6 by Palma, then Palo archbishop and Calbayog administrator. He was installed on March 8, 2007. No contemporary installation report was found: the January 8, 2007 report predates the installation, noting that Palma would meet with Abarquez to confer about the installation date, so the March 8 date rests on the roster and the Cebu page and is flagged as such.

In the window, his one substantial individual act is a February 2022 appeal for prayers after an ambush killing in Northern Samar, made as a member of the local peace bodies. No governing act of his own concerning the 1962 Missal was found in any of his three tenures.