On its 40th founding anniversary this year, the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA) keeps faith with the vision of its founder, Jaime L. Cardinal Sin, when he established the awards organization in 1978.
“This is a tribute to those who are serving God through the media,” the Cardinal had said when he launched it as a project of the Archdiocese of Manila. Then only on his fifth year as Archbishop of Manila, he explained that with the recognition, he hoped to inspire and encourage communicators to dedicate their works to the promotion of Christian values.
The CMMA has kept faith with the Cardinal’s vision. Over the past four decades, thousands of mass media workers have been submitting entries to the CMMA Secretariat. Hundreds have received the distinctive rock trophy of the CMMA as award for promoting basic human values in the most outstanding way: love of God, love for truth, respect for the environment, promotion of positive Filipino values and love for life.
The CMMA stands today as the most prestigious awards-giving body for the media sector, thanks to the spirit and influence of the Cardinal, who firmly believed in the power of the sector to bring about social and spiritual renewal and transformation.
It had very austere beginnings. The Cardinal launched the CMMA in simple unassuming rites at the Pius XII Catholic Center on UN Avenue in Malate, Manila. He gathered a number of men and women of the media who had made outstanding contributions through their respective fields of communications to country and Church.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas, who had served as private secretary to Cardinal Sin in those years, reminisced in a published article: “That was an exciting beginning, not so much for the media at large then because it was still the height of martial law and initiatives that came from the intrepid, young Archbishop were viewed by them with suspicion, but more for the media struggling to break free from control through various creative means.”
Villegas added: “At that time, the CMMA represented an objective scrutiny of the products of communications and were a much welcome encouragement and affirmation for those preserving the purity of their craft and profession.”
The CMMA, he continued, became a venue for the coming together of those media practitioners, “kindred spirits who longed for a more democratic environment for the appreciation of their skills and professional expertise.”
While the media honorees cherished the rock trophy handed to them, Villegas said, “What was more prized by the entertainment artists and media practitioners whom the CMMA honored was the opportunity to be with the ebullient Cardinal Sin who generously opened the door of his residence to them.”
The early operations of the awards were more family-type affairs. Unlike today’s CMMA that has a full-time Secretariat to attend to operations, the early CMMA was handled by the Archdiocese of Manila’s Metropolitan Department of Institutional Affairs, the precursor of what is now known as the Archdiocesan Office of communications. The office provided the secretariat and the coordinators for the awards.
Peachy E. Yamsuan, spouse of Noli Yamsuan, the official photographer of Sin, was a staff in that Communications office.
Cardinal Sin, Peachy Yamsuan recalled in an e-mail interview, formed a CMMA committee composed of him as chairman; Fr. James B. Reuter; Felix Bautista, the Cardinal’s communications officer; prominent businesswoman Fe Panlilio; and Michaela Montemayor, general manager of the Pius XII Catholic Center at that time.
Like Villegas, Yamsuan believes that the CMMA’s prestige arises from Sin’s commitment and belief in the media and the friendship he forged with people from all the categories of the media.
“The CMMA was fiercely independent then and the winners knew that the choices of the judges could not be questioned,” she said of the judges, who were handpicked by the Cardinal. “Before the start of the judging season, Cardinal Sin would host a dinner or lunch for all the members of the board of judges. Always he will tell them that he trusted their judgment and would stand by their decisions.”
On the 40th year of the CMMA, it looks back with love and inspiration to the primary role Cardinal Sin played in encouraging the media to exercise its responsibility in promoting the full development of man and the uplifting of society’s values and norms.
Luis Antonio G. Tagle, archbishop of Manila and current honorary CMMA chairman, has the full support of D. Edgard A. Cabangon, present chairman of the board of trustees, and Fr. Rufino C. Sescon Jr., executive director, in seeing to it that the organization fulfills the mandate of promoting the highest human values set on the CMMA by its founder Cardinal Sin.
Cabangon, chairman of the ALC Group of Companies that now supports the CMMA as part of its corporate social responsibility, took over the leadership of the CMMA from his late father, Ambassador Antonio L. Cabangon Chua.
In 1999, Cardinal Sin appointed the ambassador as chairman and president of CMMA. He held the post since then until he passed away in 2016, completing a total of 17 years at the helm of the CMMA.