First world champion and first order

Ms. Rubilen Amit became the first female world champion in billiards from the Philippines, when she pocketed the World Women’s 10-Ball Championship held at the Block of SM North in Quezon City in June 2009.

The 27-year-old Amit of Mandaue City, Cebu beat two-time world champion Liu Shin-mei of Taiwan, 10-4, to win the crown and $20,000.

Filipinos have long dominated world billiards as champions with the likes of Efren “Bata” Reyes, Django Bustamante, Alex Pagulayan, and Ronnie Alcano, to name a few.  But it was the first time a Filipina held the world championship.

Meanwhile, a visitor in our site logged in the following information, to correct our entry on the first religious order in the Philippines. 

The guest claimed that the first Catholic religious order who came to the Philippines were not the Franciscans, but the Augustinians who came in 1565 together with Legazpi. The first monastery in the Philippines was the Augustinian monastery in Cebu founded by Fray Andres de Urdaneta.

The Franciscans came here in 1577; Jesuits, 1581; Dominicans, 1587; Recollects, 1606; Paulists, 1862; Sisters of Charity, 1862; Capuchins, 1886; and Benedictines, 1895.

(An Italian priest based in the Philippines, for his part, wrote to tell us that it was a Franciscan priest by the name of Father Odorico, who celebrated the first mass in Bolinao, Pangasinan in 1324.)