diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

in Pastels' own words, was to bring back "the strayed sheep to the rightpath.' And his long letters to Rizal, exuding with paternal concern andculling arguments from the text of the First Vatican Council and contemporaryCatholic theological manuals, were all part of the strategy.On 19 February 1893 he ceased being Mission Superior, and over a weeklater was appointed Acting Superior of the Escuela Normal/ Thecorrespondence continued for few months more till June of that same year.RETURN TO SPAINBecause of failing health, Pastells left the Philippines on 5 October1893.22 His principal task in Spain for the rest of his life was research into thehistory of the missions established by the Spanish Jesuits in the Americas andthe Philippines. An indefatigable researcher and prolific writer, he publisheda prodigious amount of historical works: among them, Colin's Laborevangelica, which he edited and re-published with copious notes of his own;'a three-volume history of the Jesuits in the Philippines in the nineteenthcentury," into which he incorporated his many travels and apostolicendeavors as missionary in Mindanao and Mission Superior, and animpressive nine-volume work on the history of the Philippines," which hefinished just shortly before his death. His activities included the compilationand preservation of documents pertaining to the history of the Jesuits in thePhilippines.Among these documents which he had a fleet of secretaries transcribe,were the letters between him and Rizal. Pastels has made a lasting andvaluable contribution to Rizaliana for his transcriptions of Rizal's letters tohim, now kept in the Jesuit archives in San Cugat del Valles, Barcelona.Rizal's letters to Pastels published by Teodoro Kalaw in the EpistolarioRizalino were merely the drafts from Rizal's borradores, which apparentlyhad come into the possession of Mariano Ponce." In Kalaw's version therewere numerous lacunae, the wording in many instances was tentative, andRizal's fifth and last letter was missing. But the San Cugat documents areauthentic copies of Rizal's letters in final form as mailed from Dapitan.It is an irony of history that Pastels, whose ill health forced his return toSpain shortly after the conclusion of the correspondence, should outlive Rizalby 38 years. He died in Sevilla in 1932 at the age of 86. His reputation withRizal as a most travelled missionary and a priest of extraordinary zeal isconfirmed by the record of his years in Mindanao, the correspondence itself221