The Tala Foundation

Don Antonio Infante, among Don José Soriano’s “Three Musketeers,” started a non-stock, non-profit foundation, called the Tala Foundation Inc., in 1974, as an adjunct to the Tala Leprosarium founded in 1940. After helping a geologist identify a deposit of clay in Tala, Don Antonio developed an idea to make use of it with the birth of Cardinal Ceramics. Danish ceramics experts helped him set up the business to offer Tala residents — Hansenites and their out-of-school dependents — gainful employment in a ceramics and pottery workshop.

Starting with only a handful of trainees and several investors including Don Miguel and Doña Alice Guerrero, in 1975, both members of the Order helped Cardinal Ceramics grow to become a factory providing employment for over 200 Tala residents, and generating millions of pesos annually. The enterprise accepted orders for platters, coffee cups, bowls, and other ceramic tableware from as far away as Denmark, Portugal, and Spain, among several other countries. Overruns of the exquisitely designed handcrafted pieces were sold locally to a loyal set of customers in a shop on Dao Street — now Sacred Heart Street — in Makati.

Tala Leprosarium eventually deteriorated when leprosy was eradicated; the government land was sold to private entities. Cardinal Ceramics was then spun off to another group of investors who converted the business into a regular stock corporation. The ceramics enterprise flourished with its beautiful, handcrafted products, but Cardinal’s loyal customers here and abroad were sorry to see the company and its local outlet shut down sometime in the 1990s, after its founder, Don Antonio Infante, passed away.

The Tala Foundation, as approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission, was later renamed the Philippine Hospitaller Foundation, the financial arm of the Order of Malta in the Philippines. Today, it owns 14 hectares of what was once a sprawling 130 hectares, where the Tala Leprosarium once stood.