Father Ambrose, I was speaking of the Eastern CATHOLICS. At present, to the best of my knowledge, there is one Filipino Melkite priest and one (or two) Filipino Maronite priests, but they are all in the USA. There are Maronites in the Philippines but they have happily blended into the Latin Rite.
My own spiritual director is biritual, having served in Romania during the 1990's as a Jesuit serving the Greek Catholic communities. However, at present, he does not exercise his faculties.
We have an old monsignor who is authorized to offer the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on occasion, but he does so only for a select congregation. And I think he does it only once a year, or less.
As for the Orthodox, the state of Orthodoxy in the Philippines is a mess.
There is a tiny Greek Orthodox community, but it hasn't grown much in the past several years, although they do have a trickle of converts. There are four Filipino priests plus the Greek vicar. Their cathedral is in Paranaque City, Metro Manila. They do not actively proselytize, but they do take care of a lot of poor children, who are raised Orthodox. The Sunday Divine Liturgy in the cathedral typically lasts an hour or so.
The recent establishment of an Antiochian jurisdiction in the Philippines has occasioned no small controversy and scandal. In addition to the apparent animosity that developed between the Greek and Antiochian jurisdictions over Met. Paul Saliba's un-publicized visits and mass ordinations of former Protestant and vagante ministers and priests, there is also the question of the liturgy. The new "Antiochian" priests offer the Novus Ordo with all the typical Filipino liturgical abuses (no alb under the chasuble, just street clothes; stole on top of chasuble or chasu-alb, etc.) and this has resulted in not a few people mistaking them for Roman Catholics.
Personally, as an observer on the sidelines, I am deeply troubled by the Antiochian enterprise; not so much because it is an "invasion" of a traditionally Catholic country, but because of the kind of people they are dealing with.
Please realize that the Philippines has a very bad "episcopi vagantes" mania, with dozens of them all over the place, claiming apostolic succession from this or that Patriarch, etc. Most of these groups pose as "Orthodox" or as "Eastern Catholic", and given the general ignorance of people here about Orthodoxy (something that isn't surprising at all), a lot of people do mistake these vagantes as the real Orthodox or Eastern Catholic! Indeed, a few years ago, a man posing as a Byzantine Catholic bishop fooled the Cardinal Archbishop of Manila into granting him an audience and inviting him to an important occasion. Only when another, more suspicious archbishop asked the Vatican to verify did it turn out that the man was a member of an American vagante group trying to establish itself in the Philippines.
Now, to make matters worse, many of these so-called "Orthodox" offer the Novus Ordo or something very similar, not the Byzantine Liturgy or any Eastern liturgy. One big group calling itself the "Byzantine Catholic Church Incorporated" -- its headquarters are a mere 15 minutes away from my house -- offers a "Syrian Qurbono" with "inculturated vestments and language" (go figure) and claims to be part of the "Assyrian Church". I wonder what Mar Dinkha IV will make of their married episcopate and their "Carmelite" friars!
And now, you have (presumably) real Orthodox priests acting just like these vagantes, calling themselves Eastern but offering the usual Filipino Latin Rite mass? I really wonder if the Antiochian Patriarchate knows what it is getting into by accepting marginal Protestants and ex-vagantes! Personally, my fear is that the brand-new Antiochian priests will end up establishing their own vagante community. God forbid that it happen: we have too many vagantes already. I hope that, at the very least, Antioch will insist that these new priests learn the Byzantine Rite asap.
As for the ROCOR, I think that this is an interesting question.
A member of the diakonia in the Greek Orthodox cathedral once told me that "St. John of Shanghai never chrismated any Filipino into Orthodoxy." He did, however, admit that there is a small group of Filipinos in Samar island (in the eastern part of the central Philippines) who claim to have been converted to Orthodoxy by the saint. (Tubabao island is near Samar). I've never had the chance to research the group, but the thought of a "lost Russian Orthodox community" in a remote part of the Philippines should be of interest to you!
There was also a Russian Orthodox presence in Manila in the 1930's and I'd be astounded if indeed not a single Filipino had become Orthodox then.
Incidentally, Deacon Martinian of the Russian Patriarchate in NY is a full-blooded Filipino, born in Bacolod City.
