Healing priest does so ‘many miracles like in the Bible’

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATURE/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

Filed Under: Mysteries, Diseases, Personalities, Belief (Faith), Good news

MANILA, Philippines -- He could not believe his healing power. He wanted to run away from it.

A Canadian woman declared dead eight hours earlier, her organs ready to be harvested and donated, suddenly opened her eyes after Filipino priest Fr. Fernando Suarez prayed over her.

Suarez, who was then a seminarian, was stunned. “Let me out of here,” was all he could say, ready to flee.

He was supposed to go and see the woman earlier but he was not able to make it in time. When he arrived at the Ottawa Civic Hospital in Canada, it seemed too late. But Suarez went to see her anyway and, surrounded by doctors whom he requested to be present, he prayed over the woman.

The miracle happened.

The woman is now well, Suarez says, and has resumed her normal life.

That case, which happened almost nine years ago, is probably the most stunning of all, but Suarez continues to amaze, baffle and bring hope and joy through his ministry that has seen the healing of countless sick and infirm in many parts of the world, including the Philippines.

“It is not me,” he says casually. He is convinced that he is just a channel for God’s healing power.

The soft-spoken Suarez, a 2007 TOYM (The Outstanding Young Men) awardee for religious service, projects an ordinariness that is both pleasant and endearing. His boyish looks do not easily reveal “what God has wrought” through him. He does not have an electrifying aura nor does he shriek and shout to slay evil elements like some Bible-thumping televangelists do. Suarez goes about it gently, in his own soothing way, touching, praying over people, pleading for healing. And because he wants everything centered in the Eucharist, he always begins with a Holy Mass.

Like in the Bible

Miraculous healing continues to happen. People who have been assisting him for some time have witnessed the impossible.

Businessman Greg Monteclaro of Couples for Christ-Gawad Kalinga has seen it all. “Except the raising of the dead,” he says. “But the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk -- all that is told in the Bible -- I have seen it happen.”

In Bulacan, Monteclaro narrates, there was this young boy who was born with practically no bones. “He was soft -- like jellyfish. I was holding him in my arms when Father Suarez prayed over him. I myself felt the bones grow inside the boy’s body and suddenly there he was --walking.”

How does one explain that?

“My own problem here is that I have seen so many miracles, it has become so common to me,” Monteclaro says.

Not that he is complaining.

Journalist and documentarist Bernardo Lopez has his own share of miracle stories to tell and he continues to use his video camera to capture moments that he hopes would convince many of what God is doing through Suarez. He has avidly followed the priest and has uploaded images on YouTube which have been getting thousands of hits.

Boy from Butong

Born in 1967 (he turns 41 in February) in Barrio Butong in Taal, Batangas, Suarez grew up like most boys. (Taal’s antique basilica is touted as the biggest in the Far East. It is also known for the miraculous Virgin of Caysasay.)

His father, Cervando, drove a tricycle and his mother, the former Azucena Mortel, was a seamstress. The eldest of four children (he has a sister and two brothers), he attended public schools.

“We weren’t a particularly religious family,” he says. “Our family attended Mass maybe three times a year.”

At an early age, Suarez already knew how to earn a living. At 12 he rented out inflatables at Butong beach.

Healing at 16

Something happened when Suarez was 16. He came upon a paralyzed woman and took pity on her. “Naawa lang ako (I took pity on her).” He found himself praying over her and suddenly the woman was walking. He did not know what to make of it and did not talk about it much. It must have been discomfiting to a lad his age. Looking back, it all seemed so natural. But at that time, announcing it to the world was far from Suarez’s mind.

What was beginning to concern him was the call to the priesthood or religious life. “I didn’t respond. I didn’t know a priest.” How, where, when? He was waiting for cues and signs, but until they came, he just lived one day at a time, pursuing what needed to be done. He kept the call to himself, nurtured it “until lumago (it flourished).”

Going to the seminary was not an immediate option. Suarez went to Manila and graduated with a chemical engineering degree at Adamson University which is run by the Vincentian Fathers.

Mary appears

After college, Suarez entered the Franciscan Order (Conventuals). “After one-and-a-half years, I left. Then I joined the SVD (Society of the Divine Word) but I was asked to leave after six months.”

It was there, at the SVD Christ the King Seminary that, Suarez says, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him. “She told me that I would go to a far away place which was cold and windy, and there proclaim the word of God.”

Suarez was in his late 20s when he met a French-Canadian student and tourist named Mark Morin who invited him to Canada and even paid for his fare. They could have been partners in a business venture but Suarez wanted to pursue the priesthood. That was 1996.

He again tried the Diocese of Winnipeg to study as a diocesan priest but again, it did not work out and he was made to leave.

“I was an expensive venture, they said,” he says, chuckling. “They’d have to spend four-and-a-half years on me.” They preferred already ordained Filipino diocesan priests who were seeking a life abroad.

Companions of the Cross

And then he met priests of the Companions of the Cross (a Canadian congregation founded in the 1980s) and here he has stayed since. Because he had had previous religious formation and studies in philosophy and theology, it did not take long for Suarez to be ordained.

“I was ordained in 2002 when I was 35,” he says, “and I am the only one who was assigned to go worldwide soon after ordination.”

His superiors were aware of and recognized his gift and set him free to reach out to the world.

“I was nonchalant about all these. There was no pressure. I acted upon obedience and not on what I wanted. Remember, I had kept this gift for 20 years,” he says.

Abroad

Suarez’s gift of healing first became known abroad and only later in the Philippines. He has visited many countries, some of them poor, like Uganda where he walked among refugees, orphans, people sick with AIDS, malaria and yellow fever and afflicted with evil spirits.

Fr. Jeff Shannon, who accompanies Suarez on his trips, recalls their bout with restless orphaned girls in Uganda.

“As they approached us for prayer after the Mass, they rested in the Spirit for hours, then cried, wailed and screamed as the Holy Spirit moved in to free and to heal [them]. After three hours of struggle they were delivered and they became as peaceful as doves, full of love. As they sang and danced their way back to their residence, they witnessed their dormitory light up inside, even though it was late at night and there was no electricity. One girl was healed of blindness.”

Miracle stories are recorded in the newsletter of Mary Mother or the Poor-Healing Ministry, a foundation Suarez established to help the suffering poor.

Mary Mother of the Poor

Eight years ago, while praying, Suarez had a vision where he saw Jesus pouring on graces upon him. He also saw poor children asking for help. He couldn’t understand the vision’s meaning at that time.

During a visit to the Philippines some years ago, 10 poor children approached him to ask for support for their studies. Suarez sent them money and as time went by, more support came from friends who shared his vision. Support came from Austria, Canada, USA, Germany, Japan, Italy, England, Switzerland, Uganda and the Philippines. This gave rise to the Mary Mother of the Poor Foundation (MMP) which aims to help the poor through better shelter, counseling and other programs, by coordinating with health and social services in order to help the sick and the aging, by teaching the tenets of the Catholic faith and by providing programs to help the youth become good citizens.

As high as Statue of Liberty

Soon to become the center of Suarez’s healing ministry is Montemaria (Matuko Point) in the outskirts of Batangas City. Set on a hill on 20 hectares of land, the center of the Oratory of the Blessed Virgin at Montemaria will have chapels, prayer gardens, Stations of the Cross, retreat houses, campsites, lodging houses, a center for the poor and even a replica of Mary house in Ephesus (ancient city in Turkey). The place is meant to draw pilgrims who want to renew their faith.

The Montemaria centerpiece is the 33-story-high statue of Mary Mother of the Poor which will be about as high as the Statue of Liberty and higher than Christ the Redeemer of Brazil. It will face the sea between Batangas and Mindoro, known to be one of the world’s richest in marine biodiversity.

The scale model was unveiled last August with Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales and Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles in attendance.

There are claims that the stones on Montemaria have caused healing for the sick and people have started going to the place to find out for themselves.

40-hour-vigil Jan. 11-13

Nestor Mangio, one of the architects and an avid supporter of Suarez, says the oratory is scheduled to be finished in September 2008. The project is not wanting in donors. In July, the Companions of the Cross, the congregation to which Suarez belongs, will put up a foundation in the Philippines.

A 40-hour vigil is scheduled from Jan. 11-13 and pilgrims are expected to come in droves. Suarez will be there.

And how does the healing priest relax? “I do sports, I love nature, I love talking to people. I read the spiritual classics -- St. Augustine, Francis de Sales. I also like Thomas Merton,” he says.

Has the surge of the crowds affected him? “Wala sa akin ’yun. (That’s nothing to me.)” He thinks people can easily approach him because “I am not threatening.” After Mass, he says, he prays and “this saves me.”

“I would like to think that after I’ve passed through this world, I’d have made a dent.”

For now, the words of Jesus to the suffering are enough to inspire him. “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28).

(For more info visit www.fatherfernando.com or www.montemariashrine.com.)

Back-to-Christmas movement

If I were from another religion or another planet and I knew the Christmas story and how Christianity began I would be very shocked to see Christmas being celebrated with excessiveness, mindlessness, stressfulness. I would ask: how has Christmas come to this? This was not how it all began.

Simplicity has been supplanted by excess. It seems the Christ in Christmas has been x-ed. Xmas. X for excess. Xmall, Xmess. Oh, we say, but we know Christmas is alive, one just has to wade through the X-cess to find the true essence. But why must this be so?

Toxic toys, double-dead meat, smuggled goods, horrendous traffic, Christmas blues, piles of garbage, overcrowded shopping malls, desperate gift-givers, overeating, excess cholesterol and sugar, clogged airports and bus terminals, the culture of gift and cash solicitation (messengers, garbage collectors, strangers, barangay personnel leaving you envelopes into which you must put in money), and so forth and so on.

These are some of the negatives of the Christmas season that needn’t be there. How is it that Christmas is the time when the gap between the rich and the poor becomes wider than wide, with the latter feeling the pain of being on the other side of the railroad tracks? The lonely get lonelier, the hungry feel hungrier, the outcast feel like castaways indeed.



If Jesus walked the streets and malls incognito to see how his birthday is being celebrated today and to feel the overall mood of the majority, would he be happy? Your guess is as good as mine.

Would he be happy with the churches, institutions and movements that are propagating the Christian faith? Have they fulfilled their role to preach, lead by example and draw people back to where it all began? Have they succeeded in making the Christmas celebration truly meaningful, simple and memorable? Or are they, too, being drawn to the malls?

Masses are now celebrated in malls in order to spare the shoppers and employees an extra trip to their churches. The Catholic churches have conceded to the malls and are wooing back their parishioners in the malls. Worship becomes a side trip, an afterthought. So convenient, like going to a convenient store.

This is a better scenario: It used to be, and it is still the case now in some places, that it was the vendors and commercial establishments that went to the churches’ vicinity to ply their trade. Take the case of Baclaran and Quiapo. Here worship and prayer are the church-goers’ main purpose, shopping is the side trip. And so the churches there could always say, “We were here first.” (It is the local governments’ job to put order in the chaos outside the churchyard.)

I am not making a judgment on the spiritual fervor and priorities of the shopper-worshipper or the worshipper-shopper. I am just making an observation. And I am not condemning malls and their role in the economy and the role of advertising in marketing and commerce.

But one can’t help wondering if (or feel sorry that), because of the frenzy to sell and to buy for the Christmas gift-giving, the Christmas story has perhaps simply become a small side story to be told like a fairy tale accompanied by twinkling lights and artificial snow fall and elves and reindeer hurtling across the sky. The wonder and the headiness that such a scene induces are often what remain. Not “Away in a manger no crib for a bed…” and what really happened and why.

The first Christmas needn’t have been a stark scenario, what with the angels singing, a bright star shining, wise men bringing gifts and shepherds a-visiting, and heaven and nature singing. Some good and wise women must have come too. A special birth such as Jesus’ was cause for rejoicing—and also cause for worry for the powers-that-be at that time. Soon it was time to flee.

When you look at the way that birth is being celebrated now, one wonders where the Bethlehem scene is in all the fuss and frenzy.

And there isn’t a grand, concerted effort to stop the deterioration of Christmas. There isn’t a back-to-Christmas movement of some sort that I know of.

There is the Slow-Food Movement that is meant to counter the unhealthy fast-food culture and to bring back the joy of healthy home cooking. There are so many organizations and movements all over the world promoting organically-grown food minus the toxic pesticides. There is back-to-nature, back-to-natural, back-to-basics, back-to-this-and-that, etc. and the people behind these are really walking their talk, living out what they preach in a concerted way and convincing others to do the same.

Is anybody out there bringing up Christmas? I know the churches keep preaching about it. But I have yet to hear of a group or movement with an identity or a name that is going against what Christmas has become.

And heaven and nature sing, and heaven and nature sing, and heaven, and hea-heaven and nature sing! I love that portion from the carol “Joy to the World” because it is inclusive. Jesus came to redeem not only humankind but the whole of creation. Trumpets blare when that portion is sung or played, giving you a heady feeling.

Be kind to nature especially this Christmas and pre-New Year season. Let nature sing—and not groan—by managing your holiday garbage. Segregate, segregate, segregate. If you can make compost out of your organic waste so much the better. This would lessen the putrefaction and decay on the sidewalks. Do not burn and add to the pollution. Christmas should also be nature’s best moment.

Let’s bring back the true essence of Christmas through our lives. Greetings of Joy and Peace to all!

If the land could weep and sing

Well, what can I say. Weeping has turned into rejoicing. Day is breaking all over the land. Joy comes in the morning. If there should be weeping, the weeping should let flow tears of joy.

For the farmers of Sumilao who marched 1,700 km. for two months from Bukidnon to Manila under scorching heat and driving rain are finally seeing a glimmer of hope. That the disputed 144 hectares would be theirs once again, wrenched at last from corporate hands after years of weeping and gnashing of teeth on the part of the farmer-awardees.

But there were will be some waiting to do even after President Arroyo authorized that the land that had been reclassified as agro-industrial, be reverted back to agricultural land covered by the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program.

With the backing of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines and civil society groups but minus the disruptive flag-waving of hard-core ideological elements, the farmers should be on their way back to their promised land.

Nine years ago, I wrote the column piece below. I fished it out from my files some days ago when I thought the Sumilao case would again turn awry, because for a while it looked that way. Anyway, here it is as a remembrance of things past and I hope I never have to rub it in again.

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If the land could weep, it would weep rivers. It would not weep for those who fawn and faint over it, or for those who fling themselves on it while frenziedly clutching straw and stones to throw at each other and the darkening sky. What a shame. If the land could grieve, it would grieve for itself.

If the land could weep, it would weep for itself. It would not weep for the whining people who call themselves rightful landowners, who call themselves heirs to the yawning vastness simply because their fathers begot them and their mothers writhed in pain to push them out of the darkness of their hemorrhaging wombs. For why should the land waste its tears on those who have not grasped the meaning of land, the essence of the earth whence they sprang?

If the land could weep, it would weep for itself. It would not weep for those who spend precious time, talent and treasure in order to claim, reclaim and proclaim ownership of that which is supposed to be eternally ownerless. For as a slain sage had said, ``How can you own that which will outlive you?''

If the land could weep, it would not weep for those who lose much sleep deciding whose side they should take on the issue of who must till the land and make it yield flower and fruit. For why must they be sleepless and go around displaying the bags under their eyes when it has been written somewhere that a certain class of people, blessed and poor they are called, are just as qualified to inherit the earth?

If the land could weep, it would weep for itself. It would not weep for those who warm benches and sit hunched on their desks, figuring out how to dispense justice based on precise legal points and technicalities. Their brand of justice, if dictated by a thousand books alone, would be as nothing, it would be only as useful as the straw is for the bonfire. It bursts into a blinding blaze and then is no more. For why waste tears on those who work hard and earn good money, who think of themselves redeemed by their worship of the law?

If the land could weep, it would weep for itself. It would not weep for those whose grand plans for the land are stalled and who panic over the possible demise of their dreams because there exist people who need a share, who have simple plans and simple dreams. It would not grieve their possible loss for nothing could possibly be lost.

If the land could weep, it would not weep for the government officials who play God and preside over the fate of the land and its tillers, who overturn just decisions to favor the rich and mock the poor. It would not weep over the festering sores on their souls and the rudeness of their actions. It would not cry out for their redemption, but neither would it weep over its damnation.

If the land could weep, it would not weep for the hungry landless who make themselves hungrier still with their protests. For why weep for them when tears are not what they need? What they need is the justice of God and the justice of Her creatures. For as someone had said: ``It is by justice that we bring together the broken, neglected, cut-off, impoverished parts of the universe to render them whole again.''

If the land could weep, it would weep for itself because people are killing each other for it, spilling blood and guts on it, defiling it with their foul spit. It would weep rivers because its rivers have become as dry as the soul of those who claim ownership of it by virtue of words written on paper.

It would weep because they stick iron rods on pregnant fields in order that they may yield more, more--not succulent fruit and fragrant flower, but more money. Because they do not get it. Because they build fences and enclosures to ward off the so-called wretched of the land who want a little share.

If the land in Sumilao could weep, it would weep for itself and the Mapalad farmers whose rejoicing quickly turned into despair when the Supreme Court nullifed the Ramos “win-win solution” that would have given the farmers a just share of a disputed land. It would weep because the decision would pave the way for the conversion of productive agricultural land to a non-agricultural estate...

****

With their imminent victory, the farmers should march home singing, “And heaven and nature sing, And heaven and nature sing…” If the land could sing, it would sing, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace to all humankind.”

The light of their life

This book convinces me that no mother—if it could be helped—should ever leave her family to work abroad for a long, long stretch of time. That is not the book’s expressed objective and neither is it trying to find economic solutions to stop the endless stream of mothers leaving for jobs far away from their homes. But solutions to the collateral damage are in the offing.

“Nawala ang Ilaw ng Tahanan: Case Studies of Families Left Behind by OFW Mothers” tells us what happens when the mother is away for long. The title alludes to mothers as light and translates as “the light of the home has gone”. That description of the state of affairs in the domestic front came from the left-behind families themselves. They know what it is like, they remember the day the light went out.

The little book is a compilation of case studies by psychotherapist and prolific book author Ma. Lourdes Arellano-Carandang, and psychologists Beatrix Aileen Sison and Christopher Carandang. Ten OFW families are featured, each of them with the individual profiles of fathers and children (and mothers in some cases), their feelings, world views, hopes and problems, as well as how they cope and find solutions.
Plus more solutions, but this is getting ahead of the review.



The cases are presented in a simple, straightforward manner—meaning they are easy reading. They are not written in a literary or featurized journalism style with fancy phrases and colorful details.

The approach used is the family-systems approach with a clinical-phenomenological method which means going into the inner dynamics of the families and even into the realm of feelings. Projective techniques such as drawings also help.

These are families with real names, nicknames and faces, each one different from another, but with so many commonalities in the way they cope with the absence of a most important member of the family—the mother. Yes, first and foremost, the mother (as the title says), not simply the wife.

After reading all the case studies, I could see that it is as mother that “ilaw ng tahanan” is missed. It is the absence of his children’s mother that the husband must deal with first. And so if the case studies give much attention to husbands (including their own growing-up years) it is in order to show how they cope with the burden of parenting that is thrust upon him.

“Natay” is how some left-behind fathers refer to themselves, with some self-deprecating humor, that’s for sure. Na- from nanay or mother and -tay from tatay or father. Oh, but if I may digress, I had done a story on a left-behind husband-father who performed his dual role with aplomb, with nary a trace of self-pity.
But it is the children, yes, the individual children, who feel their mother’s absence in a very individual way. The eldest adolescent, the middle child, the one sent away to live with a grandma, the young ones who couldn’t remember the day their mother left, the baby of the family—each one feels the absence in his or her own way. Each one acts out feelings, copes differently.

This is not a case of a mother permanently gone because of death or separation. This is a case of she is there but she is not there. Ambivalent and mixed feelings are to be expected.

In the Baltazar family it is the adolescent who expresses the conflict—malungkot na masaya, sad but happy. “(The daughter) longs for her mother but appreciates the money her mother sends. She copes with the help of her best friend, TV, sports, school and chores. She wishes her father were strong, ‘matatag’. She sees through his ‘I’m perfect’ veneer.”

The Fernandez family has been able to adjust well mainly because of the father’s openness to change and his willingness to take over the domestic front. Add to that Arcadio Fernandez’s stable and loving relationship with his wife.

Daughter Jeralyn, 16, feels good that her father constantly asks him how she is doing (palaging kinokumusta). She feels the great optimism and this has helped her cope.

But there are problem husbands, as there are problem fathers. Men who can’t cope and who take to drinking, gambling and even physically hurting the children.

The Lirios are perhaps the most problematic. A son, Gio feels resentment and does not appreciate his mother’s sacrifice. “He thinks that her staying with the family instead of leaving is a bigger sacrifice. NOT to leave is a bigger sacrifice than to leave…His way of coping is through friends, school and his music.”

A whole section is devoted to analyses of situations, highlighting the coping mechanisms that work positively and why, what should be encouraged (expressive activities like art, play, etc), what should be discouraged (expensive toys, obsession with gadgets and games). What is the role of the school, the church and the community?

It must be added here that a number of mothers in the cases presented left in such short notice, leaving their children instantly sad and lost and without understanding the reason for leaving. What could be worse than this? And if there is no deep and caring relationship between the father and the children, what happens next?

One of the suggestions raised in the book is the setting up of support groups for fathers at the barangay level. It can be called AMMA Nurturing Center. AMMA stands for Ama na Magaling Mag-aruga ng Anak (fathers who are great in caring for children).

Carandang, Sison and Carandang suggest that a team of psychologists and volunteers can work with the government to start such pilot centers. These could then be duplicated in other barangays.

These should bring some light back to many homes.

Leaders for Health Program

“Stories of town mayors giving out medicines, from paracetamol to penicillin, are not unusual because these can get votes. On the other hand, municipal doctors complain about not having enough funds to buy common drugs and gasoline for the ambulance in emergencies. Community members largely stay on the sidelines, rarely participating in the arenas of local governance.”

This is the scenario that is common especially in far-flung places. This is the situation that the Leaders for Health Program (LHP) wants to address and change “by making health part of the governance process wherein there is transparency, efficiency and civic participation.”

Situations like the one that broke into the news recently, the one about the outbreak of parasite infection or capillariasis in Zamboanga del Norte. Reports said at least 70 had already died in the village of Moyo in Zamboanga del Norte leaving families orphaned. More than 300 villagers had been infected and suffered chronic diarrhea and dehydration.

The poor villagers had been eating river fish and shrimps that had the capillariasis worm because there was little else. And when struck by the disease, they could not afford the medicines. Worse, there was not enough medicine. No tests had been done so the mortality was simply attributed to chronic diarrhea. But what caused the diarrhea?



I don’t know if the doctor was quoted right, but she simply blamed the villagers because “they don’t know how to defecate…they die because they could not even follow simple instructions.”

What a malodorous statement, what a lethal situation.

The Ateneo de Manila University’s Professional Schools is offering the Leaders for Health program not only for doctors but for local officials and community workers as well. Through the “tri-leaders” strategy, the program aims to enhance governance skills in municipalities.

You just don’t send down a doctor brimming with idealism then expect him or her to do wonders in a remote area. With LHP training this doctor could become a leader and help in the transformation of communities.

The four-year LHP course does not mean the doctor will be away from the community that long. The program, in fact, entails that the doctor serve for four years in the community while at the same time study for a Masters in Community Health Care Management. The two-year academic component is spread out in modules. The doctor would have to attend the modules at the Rockwell campus. In the case of modules for mayors or community workers, professors and mentors are sometimes flown to places where the trainees are gathered for the academic and theoretical components.

The classroom component enables the health workers to reflect on the realties, learn theories and make plans of action that would improve the health delivery system in their areas.

The mayor would have to be a student again and enrol in a certificate course in Community Health Management. A series of short-term modules would not only help get funds for the town’s health programs, the modules would also help the mayor work with the doctor and improve local governance.

How many elected local executives could say they were ready for the job of governance? For many, it was a hit-and-miss thing, an on-the-job training. LHP provides focus so that time and effort are not wasted for learning and unlearning.

Community leaders are the third leg of the stool. They are the bridge between the doctors, the mayors and the people. They are enrolled in a certificate course that would help them participate in health planning.

LHP is not just a program that sends doctors to remote, forgotten towns. It has evolved into a school without walls, training doctors, politicians and community leaders “to change the way people think, behave and feel about health and their well-being.”

Ateneo is not alone in this. It has learned from the Doctors to the Barrios program, it is supported by the Department of Health’s Center for Health and Development as well as by corporations that allocate funds. The LHP also counts on individuals to give through the P60-campaign. There is the Adopt-a-Municipality Program that would provide scholarships for mayors, doctors and community leaders. (Email info@leadersforhealth.org for more information.)

Ateneo has published a booklet that has heart-warming stories on the LHP experiences which are backed up by solid data on communities served. These are on-the-ground stories about individuals and communities, the problems encountered, the solutions found, the partnerships formed.

These are stories of hope and transformation. There should be more of these.

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“Don’t’ abandon us!” The Sumilao farmers who walked 1,700 kilometers from Bukidnon to Manila, braved heat and rain, suffered hunger and fatigue are crying out to the government to heed their plea for justice.

I hope agrarian reform secretary Nasser Pangandaman, who flew to Bukidnon to see for himself the contested 144-hectare land that the Sumilao farmers are supposed to have won, would realize why the farmers have gone this far. The certificates of land ownership award (CLOA) of the farmer-beneficiaries had been cancelled and the land given back to the former landowner.

The farmers felt that the DAR had abandoned them in the past when the land conversion went unchallenged, and the Supreme Court, because of mere technicalities, had to uphold the former owners who are now converting the land into a piggery farm for San Miguel Food Inc.

I hope the farmers don’t go home forlorn and empty-handed this Christmas.