For his body of poetic work in Spanish, he was posthumously awarded the Premio José Rizal de las Letras Filipinas after his death in 2020.

His father, an educator, contributed articles to national magazines in the Philippines and authored a posthumously published book, Almost on the Carpet.

He taught literature as a professorial lecturer, served as a school chaplain for many years and as the first pastor of Filipino ancestry of Holy Rosary Church (Manhattan) in East Harlem, New York.

His work explores the relationship between man and his Creator, between space and time, and between the earthly and heavenly continuums of life, alongside our overwhelming shared sense of love, courage and hope.

During this time, he served as editor-in-chief of Search, a journal on the life and works of Augustine of Hippo published in Makati, Philippines, by Colegio San Agustin-Makati.

On June 20, 2013, he released under his real name his controversial second novel Rubrics and Runes, a satire tackling clericalism, simony, financial shenanigans and sex abuse in the Catholic Church as perpetrated by some misguided churchmen.

[18][19] According to the blurb of Rubrics and Runes, it "tells the story of a friar who gets caught in the maelstrom of conventual and secular politics when the two supposedly incongruous worlds collide.

But his fate as a religious priest takes a precipitous turn when social paroxysm grips the fictional island-nation of Islas e Islotes after the downfall of the government.

To cover up his own misdeeds, his abominably corrupt religious superior leading a double life seizes the ensuing chaos and collaborates with human rights violators in military uniform to accuse the completely innocent friar of a fabricated heinous crime.

In an article titled "Una Perspectiva Históríca de la Poesía Hispanofilipina"[20] that he wrote for Universidad de Murcia, Edmundo Farolan, poet and correspondent[21] of the Real Academia Española, cited Centina's poetry in Spanish as belonging to an avant-garde group of Filipino poets who “in addition to Castilian...write in other languages and in different styles and themes—free verse and prose, to traditional metrics surrealist themes, Dadaists and protest, realistic subjects, religious and serene.

He hinted about his health problems in the preface to his book Madre España, in which he thanked the Spanish people for their generosity: "I am writing this a year to the day I underwent a life-saving surgery, full of gratitude in my heart for the hospitality and the generosity of the Spanish people, which have sustained me in my long and continuing journey to recovery.

"[27] Author and award-winning poet Thomas R. Caffrey, in his introduction to Recovecos/Crevices, praised the book: "In his rhythmic verse the script artist strikes a chord that reverberates throughout us, transforming the mechanistic words into vibrant song and our stasis into action.

Today’s brain science has discovered what the psalmists, poets and ancient musicians could only know by intuition: that music, melody or verse stimulate us to movement and emotion.

"[28] Durling his life, Centina authored hundreds of newspaper columns and magazine articles as well as edited a scholarly journal on St. Augustine and contributed poetry and fiction to literary publications.