I arrived in Cagayan de Oro in the early afternoon of Monday, January 2.  The signs of the calamity were visible from the air as we approached the airport, but the full extent of the damage hits you when you stand on the river bank or visit those places where whole neighborhoods were simply washed away.

The damage to the water system was such that most of Cagayan still did not have running water when I arrived.  On the way from the airport we saw groups of people surrounding trucks or fire hydrants where water was being dispensed while others were coming and going with all kinds of water containers – the innovative spirit of people once more shining through the difficulties.  Drinking water was also being dispensed at points set up by the Red Cross and others who had large water purifying machines.   The lack of water leads to many difficulties one of which is the difficulty people have in doing any kind of cleaning up. Water was restored to the western side of Cagayan by Thursday, January 5, a big help.

Holy Rosary Parish, which is served by the Columbans, was affected but, when compared to other parts of Cagayan and Iligan, only relatively so.  Fr. Paul Finlayson estimates about 100 families are affected with about 30 homes destroyed.   Food and other immediate necessities have been provided for these families.  At a meeting on Tuesday, January 3, attended by most Columbans in Mindanao, it was agreed that we will continue to cooperate with the Archdiocese of Cagayan who are doing a very good job of coordinating the relief operations, without prejudice to the specific needs of the parish.

What is the more pressing need now is that of rehabilitation, which must include relocation for most of those affected.   There is little point in rebuilding homes in those areas that could be hit again in the immediate future.  Getting this right and utilizing all the help that has been promised by the Government, foreign governments, aid agencies and private individuals is both a priority and a challenge. In the meanwhile, there is a need for some kind of intermediate accommodation so that people can get back to some normality. We will continue to provide any further “immediate” aid where it is seen to be genuinely needed.
The effort now is to get people out of the evacuation centers which are mostly schools and churches and into temporary accommodation.   Archbishop Ledesma in his pastoral letter just before Christmas urged those who were not affected to “adopt” a family and care for them not only during Christmas but also in the coming months until that family can go to a more permanent home.  Of course, relatives are already doing this for their own families, but one of the fears that some people have is that if they leave the evacuation centers now they might lose their status as genuine claimants on the aid that is promised.  There are a number of tent communities being set up also to give each family some way of being together.

There is a lot of pain not only for those directly affected but also for those who heard the cries of others for help and were unable to do anything. I’m not sure that time will heal all this, but certainly God can and the faith of many of these people is both challenging and humbling.  One eight year old boy who lost his mother and two of his siblings had found a photo of her and would look at it and say, “I will see you in Heaven Mommy.”

There are the happy stories too: the child who was saved by riding on the back of a neighbor’s Labrador retriever dog.  The owners of the dog were not at home when the tragedy struck.  Or my little friend Cedric, who is all of four years old, who clung to a floating refrigerator when he got separated from his parents.  He was found by fishermen several miles away later that morning still astride the fridge.

There is much more that could be added to this, but I simply want to give you some snapshots of the situation as I experienced it.  In truth it reduced me to silence, or more accurately perhaps, it called to silence.  In so many ways it is overwhelming and yet people do what they can and many have sent help.  At times I felt like an intruder, but as I listened to the stories and simply held a hand or embraced the person, I was glad I was there and privileged to be with such people.

I want to thank all those who have sent in money to our fund and to assure you that we will continue to monitor the situation in both Cagayan and Iligan so as to best use the money we have received.  As I mentioned above, we see the greater need now to be that of rehabilitation and that is probably where we will use most of the money left in the fund and any that will get added to it.  I hope that this is acceptable to all of you.

Finally, on this Feast of the Epiphany, may Jesus show His face to all those who are still suffering so terribly.  May He also show His face to those who, by the help they send, the prayers they make or their work on the ground, have become that face of Christ for others.
Fr. Patrick O’Donoghue

But the challenge for the recently appointed Secretary of Tourism, Ramon Jimenez, is to find a way to promote these positive aspects in the midst of many negatives. Some officials naively tell journalists not to publish bad news that will damage the country’s image. The challenge is to change the negative realities that create bad news.

It is difficult to summarize these positive and attractive attributes into one simple slogan that will intrigue and attract the interest of the holiday maker. The public relations companies are being paid fabulous sums of money to come up with a slogan to promote in a word these attractive attributes of the country. It has been suggested that a national competition be held so the people can decide the best slogan. It will help the people think positively about the Philippines as a tourist destination for themselves and others.

This can help change the low self-esteem that some Filipinos have of themselves due to a colonial mentality. They have been convinced that they are inferior to Caucasians whom they wrongly think are superior. It’s time to assert the dignity of the Filipino and a true patriotic spirit through responsible tourism.

A marketing slogan has to be authentic. A slogan such as “Nature’s Glory – The Philippines,” focuses on the natural beauty of the country. Beautiful it is indeed, but it’s a hard sell when the international media and the internet is chockablock with news reports of the environmental damage caused by open pit-mining, coal-fired power plants, deforestation, coral damage, polluted coastal waters, untreated sewerage flows and other environmental man-made disasters. A government and private investors that want a huge tourist industry have to address the environmental threats first.

What needs to be done to win four million tourists is to close down the sex tourism industry and promote genuine dignified tourism where the true friendly nature of the people is not linked to sex bars and trafficked persons. “The Philippines – Friendly Faces, Warmest Hearts” will then be authentic invitations and not empty marketing tag-lines. The tourism industry must realize that the future is in a morally clean authentic tourism where the tourist can meet the real people and have a life-changing experience.

Columban Fr. Shay Cullen lives and works in the Philippines.

The photo is courtesy of http://www.columban.org.au/

Columban Fr. Don Kill provided the following update in the aftermath of the typhoon:

We [Columbans] are out here doing what we can. I am going to Cagayan de Oro right after Christmas. I recently found out that at least one of the families with loved ones suffering from hemophilia lost everything in the flood and that the two hemophiliacs were injured and required hospitalization. Fortunately we had some emergency supplies of Factor 8 which stops the bleeding.

Fr. Pat has set up a special fund in Manila to help us help with the situation. No matter how much we have, it will not be enough to restore the lives of those who lost everything.

May God bless us with many helpful hearts during this time of rebuilding. We thank God for our safety, and we pray for those whose needs far outweigh our own.

With Love and prayers,

Fr. Don

Help by Donating to the relief effort: Donate Here

This is simply to offer an outline of the tragic situation in northern Mindanao after Typhoon Sendong (known internationally as Wasi) hit the area on Friday and Saturday last.

There were heavy rains (but no heavy winds) in Ozamiz on Friday, Dec 16.  This caused extensive flooding, some of it around the Catadman (where the former Columban House is). The water levels rose gradually (though quickly) and then receded later. Some of our former workers have houses in that area, but their houses are built such that they were above the water levels.  The Columban Sisters “Community of Hope “was not affected.  Fr. Vinnie Busch’s house where the Subanen Crafts project is based and where he lives was also spared though there was water all around.  The house where Fr. Sean Martin lives is on high ground and unaffected.  Fr. Don Kill’s house was slightly affected.

The typhoon hit the more westerly area of North Mindanao late on Friday night with high winds and heavy rains.  It was early on Saturday morning while most people were asleep that the worst devastation happened with flash floods ripping through large areas including Cagayan de Oro and Iligan.  It would seem that water rushing down from the mountains and bringing trees and other debris (including uprooted coconut trees etc) crashed through these densely populated areas with tragic results.   Many people simply had no chance.  The scenes of devastation speak for themselves.   People living on the small islet “Isla de Oro” at the mouth of Cagayan River were simply swept away as the whole islet disappeared.  A similar fate overtook those on the islet at the mouth of Mandulog River in Iligan.

In Cagayan de Oro, Holy Rosary Parish (where Fr. Paul Finlayson is parish priest) was affected, though relatively so where compared to other places in the city.  To date there are two reported deaths in the parish and a number of houses destroyed.  Other parts of the city were much more heavily damaged and there are now several hundred reported fatalities with more hundreds unaccounted for. In some instances whole families were wiped out and this adds to the confusion as to numbers killed or missing.  There are no immediate relatives to give information and with communication made difficult it will take time for relatives to come to check on those who have not been in contact since Saturday.

One of our workers in the Columban House in Cagayan had his house severely damaged though he and his family were physically unharmed as they climbed onto the roof of their house and stayed there until rescued.  They are now staying in our house in Cagayan.  Many of their neighbours were less fortunate and were killed.

The cook in Holy Rosary has a severe gash in her leg – she was hit by part of a roof of another house.  She is being cared for by the Marisol Rojas and Anna Flores, Columban lay missionaries, in their house which was unaffected.

The city government says it cannot guarantee that water will be restored before the end of the year.  This water shortage is also compounding efforts to identify bodies which are still being recovered as many of them are covered in mud.  There is some tension around this as suggestions have been made to bury the dead once found, but relatives, very understandably and already traumatized, need to identify the bodies of their loved ones and give them some semblance of a dignified burial.    The city government has asked neighboring towns to send their fire trucks to bring water and distribute it to those in need.

Relief efforts have been slow but are now being organized.  Associate Priest Matthew (Park Chan-In) and our two Chinese students (John Wang and Joseph Li), who had gone to Cagayan last Friday as part of their Christmas vacation, are presently helping at the Cathedral in Cagayan with the packing of goods for those affected.  Marisol and Anna are also helping there.

Fr. Paul Finlayson is trying to organize facilities in his own Church compound to temporarily house around 20-25 families.   He will also have to try to provide food, water and some clothing. Other parishes are doing likewise.

Blessings,

Fr. Pat O’Donoghue

The near absence of political will and the blindness of denial are allowing the planet’s temperature to creep upward to the maximum allowable temperature increase of 2 degrees before disaster strikes. Even this, the experts say, is already a calamity. An increase of .75 degrees is causing the death of the coral reefs – the life giving food of thousands of species of fish upon which millions of families depend for a daily meal.

The wanton destruction of the Philippine black corals of Mindanao is shocking and is the result of corporate and local government corruption. Good the traders were caught but too late for a huge area of corals. They take a long time to recover. Besides, the oceans are absorbing all the CO2 they can and they are becoming more acidic. Global fish stocks are threatened as a result.

There will be more massive crop failures, drought, floods, rising sea levels, greater forest destruction and massive population migrations. The prices of food commodities are increasing at an alarming rate and as production drops, famine could once again kill millions in some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It sounds all gloom and doom, it is, and we have to take serious action to stop it. The deadline is 2016 before a tipping point of global temperature is reached that could make the warming irreversible.

Besides, the earth is already warmer and vast tracts of marsh lands in Siberia and near the Arctic Circle are melting releasing billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere adding to the blanket of gas that is insulating the planet and preventing the heat from escaping while the sun beats down cooking us like hams in an oven. Winters will be harsher, colder and more prolonged as happened this year again in the Northern hemisphere.

Here in Bonn, Germany, the experts and political negotiators at the Bonn Conference on Climate are trying to work out an international agreement for all counties to cut back on the rising level of emission of CO2 that is causing global warming. Before the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 parts per million (p.p.m.), now the level is close to 400 p.p.m. An hour away from here in Bonn, corporate lobbyists are also trying to block progress in the interests of the oil and coal industry and others like auto-makers who benefit from burning fossil fuels.

If we humans continue destructive behaviors, like destroying forests and burning fossil fuels in coal plants to make electricity and populating the world with billions of methane-making cattle, we are going to make big trouble for ourselves and the rest of human kind. The forests are threatened. In Western North America, the warmer climate has allowed a wood-eating beetle to thrive and destroy up to 70 percent of the trees.

Ordinary humans can march, demonstrate and do much lobbying by letter-writing to push politicians and corporate tycoons to stop building more coal plants and turn to non-destructive and renewable ways of making electricity such as geothermal, solar and wind power.  We must persuade politicians and tycoons to stop blocking progress on limiting CO2 emissions by an international agreement.

We too can change our lifestyles by protecting our local environment, stop logging, planting trees, recycling, and establishing  organic food gardens to feed ourselves and eat less meat. We have to be good guardians of the planet and save it for the next generation.

Columban Fr. Shay Cullen (in light blue shirt below) lives and works in the Philippines

Jun is now a happy man because “God has answered my prayers.” Jun said, “He sent me honest work.”  like millions of jobless people around the world, Jun was unemployed and homeless and wandered the streets of Olongapo City, the Philippines, looking for any job he could find to get scraps of food for his family. They cowered from the lashing rain and typhoon winds in a hovel on the city dump. When the storm passed, they continued picking up bits of plastic and junk that they could sell. There are no free social services, like medical aid and unemployment payments for the poor where Jun lives. Jun and his family were on the edge.

That’s where all of us Catholics are called to respond, to help people worse off than ourselves before they get to the edge or fall off into despair and hopelessness. We can be true to the mission of Jesus of Nazareth and His Church. His Sermon on the Mount is reflected in the social teaching of the Church. His words and example are the foundation of all the loving service we are bound to give to the poor and the oppressed.

St. James called us to express our faith in action for justice. Preda (People’s Recovery Empowerment Development Assistance Foundation Inc.) is a human development organization that sets up micro Fair Trade projects for impoverished families. I began this foundation in 1974 as a way to implement the social teaching of the Church and bring about a more just and loving community free from exploitation and abuse whenever possible.

Reducing poverty and suffering is best achieved by giving the economically poor opportunities to help themselves support their families through dignified work. For millions of people, dignified work is hard to come by in the Philippines. Here, a few rich people control the wages and the levers of industry. The Philippines is a wealthy nation but almost all is held by the elite families, about 200 strong, owning or controlling up to 70% of the natural wealth and production capacity. As a result, millions of struggling Filipinos live in poverty and millions more have emigrated in search of jobs and fair wages.

Jun is a devout Christian, and he never became bitter or blamed God for his poverty and joblessness. He knew it was because of the unjust system and the politicians that exploited the poor for their own selfish ends. Jun never lost faith that one day he would be lifted up like one of the poor and oppressed that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount would inherit The Kingdom.

Then Preda social workers found Jun and his family, hungry and shivering in their shack on the rubbish dump, and the social workers invited them to the Preda shelter to recover and join a job training seminar. Jun learned bag making, became an expert sewer and was soon earning good wages making the popular recycled bags from discarded juice pouches. Jun is a fast worker and was able to pay off the interest free loan given to him by Preda for him to purchase his own sewing machine.

In short order, Jun’s children were no longer suffering from malnutrition, and they went to school daily with all their needs supplied. Jun and his wife Maria built a small house on a hillside outside the town. Their lives were transformed.

While at Preda, they were trained to save their earnings for the day when circumstances changed. After a few years, the market became saturated with bags as other bag producers had copied the Preda bags and orders declined. Again Jun was facing unemployment as there were only a few orders.

Preda then suggested that he try making sandals from used rubber tires. Jun took the new training course, and soon he was an expert turning out an excellent quality, well finished flip-flop sandals.

These sold well locally and abroad for a few years, and all was well until recently when the fashion changed again and customers no longer requested the sandals. But then, most recently, came the request from England. The  Southampton Street Pastors work with street people, and they give out free sandals to the street people during the summer months. They asked Jun to supply sandals. It was a blessing for him and his family.

It is also a blessing for these people in difficult circumstances in Southampton. Some go barefooted from time to time. The people of Southampton also are fulfilling the mission of Jesus and walking with the poor, leading them to a life of dignity. The distribution of the extremely durable flip-flop sandals is a gift and a contact point for the pastors who reach out with compassion and understanding to the poor and rejected people, some of whom are homeless.

Jun and Maria, are now doing a hard day’s work every day to produce up to 200 pairs of sandals. The work supports Jun, his wife Maria and their two children. Maria helps with the sewing of the straps that make the sandals strong, wearable and durable. It is an idea sandal for indoor and summer wear.

Jun’s livelihood is based on Fair Trade criteria and Catholic Social Teaching. It is at the heart of Preda’s livelihood project to give work with dignity. Jun receives high prices for his sandals, a just wage and social benefits. The manufacture of these sandals has enabled him to build an extension onto his house, buy household appliances and a television and send his children to school with all their needs supplied. The Southampton justice project has helped his family overcome poverty and has brought them a life of dignity and respect. There is a bright future ahead in the making of Fair Trade recycled sandals and hope of spiritual renewal for those who will wear them.

This act, Republic Act 9344, is a landmark legislation of compassion that seeks to restore the deprived life of children in conflict with the law. It says that children younger than 15 have an alternative to harsh, cruel prison life where many of them have been raped, abused, beaten and starved in sub-human conditions. They can be helped, given a chance of an education and rehabilitation through meeting their basic human rights, nutritional needs and education. The one straight forward solution is to feed and educate the young and give jobs with a living wage to the older teenage youth.

Those who advocate the repeal of the law don’t know the reality. They are branding the street children as the tools of the criminal syndicates which the police are either too scared to oppose or are in cahoots with. Instead of exposing the criminal syndicates and their wealthy masterminds, the irresponsible commentators are setting up the street kids as targets for the death squads.

The death squads are busy killing hundreds of street youth and doing their bloody butchering work with a nods and winks from their political backers and incompetent police. Cebu and Davao cities are the most notorious for the extermination of street youth. Ten years ago, I called on the former Mayor of Davao City to defend human rights and stop the killings of street youth. Instead, he charged me with libel and had me hailed to court.

It was a proud moment indeed to be able to take a stand for the kids in court but what’s even more amazing was the crowd of street children that came to Davao City airport to surround me with their malnourished bodies to protect me from the assassins’ guns and escort me to a van away from danger. In the end, the Mayor was persuaded to drop the baseless charge. The death squads rule by fear, but the politicians call it democracy. If the majority of the people approve by their silence, then I suppose it is. It is the democracy of death and the death of democracy.

There will be no end to the thousands homeless urchins that challenge our conscience and religious beliefs until the root cause is dealt with. That is the corrupt system of government and the insurmountable inequality of society. There is the unbridgeable gap between the tiny group of luxurious living rich and the masses of struggling poor. It’s a society where 2% of the population own about 70% of the natural wealth and the millions of hungry slum dwelling people are barely surviving from day to day.

Poverty, mass unemployment and hunger drive the children from these slums on to the streets to a miserable life of hunger and hopelessness. They go begging, and cannot resist stealing when they are hungry and smell the delicious foods that waft out from the fast food restaurants. The hungry children are driven crazy with the desire for a decent meal. Most of the time they live on left over from the garbage cans. The government has no homes that cares for them and delivers their basic human rights. They are the abandoned and forgotten until they are forced to steal in order to eat. Then they are condemned to prison.

This is the fundamental failure of the Church, politicians, society and humanity – to remain indifferent to the hungry needy children and allow them to be condemned as criminals. We have to come to their defense and give them a life of dignity and decency.
Columban Fr. Shay Cullen lives and works in the Philippines.

Fr. Fausto Tentorio PIME

Dear Friends,

It is with great sadness that I write to inform you of the murder of yet another missionary here in the Philippines. Fr. Fausto Tentorio PIME who had served in Mindanao for many years and was working with the Indigenous Peoples and farmers of Arakan Valley was brutally murdered Monday morning as he was about to get into his vehicle to drive to Kidapawan City (seat of the diocese) for a meeting. He had survived another attempt on his life Oct. 7, 2003, and it seemed that he had received death threats in the past two years. He was 59 years old. He is the the third PIME to have given his life as a missionary in Mindanao. Fr. Tulio Favale was murdered in April 1985 in North Cotabato in a very brutal manner, and Fr. Salvatore Carzedda was killed in an ambush in Zamboanga City in 1992.

It seems that as Fr. Fausto was about to get into his vehicle, a gunman walked up to him and shot him eight times and then left on a motorcycle. As you can imagine, his death has shocked everyone, particularly so in the manner in which it was done in broad daylight. He will be sorely and sadly missed most especially by those whom he served so wholeheartedly and selflessly. I have already conveyed our condolences to the PIME Regional Superior and to the Bishop Romulo de la Cruz, the bishop of Kidapawan.

In the Philippines Al Qaeda-linked groups battle for the ideal of Islamic “freedom” which can be more oppressive that what went before. Other right wing groups have death squads that go about their bloody business on the many nods and winks of their political and military masters assassinating priest, pastors, social activists, human rights workers, journalists and political opponents working for social justice. In their morally twisted and corrupt minds it’s a terrible yet necessary work to eliminate the leftists in order to preserve the supremacy of the privileged ruling class.

That kind of violence is driven by the lust for total political power, hatred of opponents who threaten that power and the fear of loss of the money that it brings through corrupt practices to the political ruling family. A sense of impunity from prosecution fuel’s the imperious order to have the people killed.

When the police arrived on the small Norwegian island not far from Oslo a few weeks ago, they confronted a calm well-armed Anders Behring Breivik surrounded by the scattered bodies of the dead and dying victims, almost 65 of them. They were the children of labor party stalwarts on a political education summer camp. It was “grotesque but necessary” he said. He told police that he had his reasons and would tell them to the world from the platform of the court. What lies behind such horrific acts of terrorism and violence may be seen in his document of justification.

His “reasons” for such horrific atrocities lie in his manifesto, 1500-pages long, posted on the internet only hours before he set out on his murderous mission are basically racist, anti-Islamic and an extreme right-wing ideological motivation peppered with his own mixture of fundamental religious rhetoric. He wants to wage a war against those liberals whom he accuses of allowing Muslims into Norway and Europe. He believes that they betray the Nordic race and their policies of multi-culturalism make them traitors to the purity of the “Nordic genotypes” whom he fears are being driven to extinction. He wants to expel all Muslims from Norway and Europe and decries what he calls the colonization of Europe by Islam which the political elite of Europe are to blame whom he brands as “Cultural Marxists.” He describes himself as a kind of knight fighting for the purity of western civilization from the contamination of “Islamic Imperialism.”

In all of the above some extreme ideological or political motivation drives the violence and if that is lacking, greed and the lust for power is abundantly present. A peaceful,  loving, caring society where all are respected and treated equally and the leaders serve the people is the ideal of the Kingdom. We just have to do all we can to promote peace, non-violence and live and promote the values of the Kingdom of justice and truth to make it happen.

Fr. Shay Cullen lives and works in the Philippines.

The intimacy and honesty in the conversations over meals became the highlight of the conference for many of us. Sharing food with people helps to overcome fear of the other and build friendships. All cultures have their own rules and customs for meals. Understanding different customs helps to overcome boundaries. Life together is something to be enjoyed like a delightful feast.

On August 1, 2011, we entered the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. I received a number of invitations to share iftar (breaking of the fast) meals with Muslim brothers and sisters and both enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to experience one of their important rituals.