In 1984, seven years after her first visit to the Philippines, the petite Albanian nun in white and blue habit in sandals set foot in Davao City. Nine years after she died in 1997, she was canonized saint of the Roman Catholic Church on September 4, 2016.
Born on August 26, 1910 as Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu in the Republic of Albania, Saint Teresa of Kolkota (India), known as Mother Teresa, founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950 to assist people dying from HIV-AIDS, leprosy, and tuberculosis. Present in over 130 countries, the congregation supervises mobile clinics, soup kitchens, schools, orphanages, and dispensaries.
St. Teresa’s first and only visit in Davao took place at a time when the country was reeling from the tarmac assassination of Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Turmoil could be felt and political instability was wracking the entire nation. Next to St. John Paul II who celebrated a Mass at the Davao airport in February 1981, she is the second saint to have physically set foot in the region.
Her Davao visit, though well covered by the press, was short and memorable. With help from the Davao archbishop Antonio Ll. Mabutas, she opened her congregation’s first mission house, the Home of Pag-asa at Fatima, a stone’s throw from a populous slum known as Piapi, where the Sisters started their ministry.
The house, known as the Immaculate Heart of Mary Home for the Sick, the Dying and the Abandoned, is a two-story structure that became the home of sick, dying, and abandoned adults on the ground floor, with the second level for the sick and dying children. Besides attending the needs of the of the infirm, the nuns did house chores in the home of the poorest of the poor, visited jails and fed the inmates, and taught children the rudiments of the alphabets.
Two years later, with help from the charitable Santos-Munda family, the sisters used a space which they transformed into what is now the Home for Sick and Malnourished Children at Molave Street, in Juna Subdivision, Matina. On July 21, 2003, the Fatima home was moved to a spacious place in New Salmonan, Agdao, which the sisters christened as the Home for the Abandoned and Dying Destitutes. Central to this new ministry are sick children needing treatment, caring for abandoned kids, and sending orphans to study in nearby schools or institutes.
All told, the unsung assistance of archdiocesan clergy, laymen, and kindhearted individuals and institutions have a significant role in the survival of the mission houses. With help from benevolent corporate sponsors and benefactors, more needy and indigents have shared the blessings the Sisters have sustainably received.
In her lifetime, Mother Teresa, dubbed as ‘the saint of the gutters,’ won high-profile honors including the 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Peace Prize and the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. Underlining the mission of her nuns are the opening of more centers throughout the archipelago, namely in Manila, Dagupan, Nueva Caceres, Cebu, Davao, Tuguegarao, and Palo, Leyte, to name a few.
An article (‘St. Teresa of Calcutta: God’s gift to Davao’) that appeared in Davao Catholic Herald on September 3, 2017, poignantly details the ministry of the nuns inside a lockup:
“One Wednesday morning, while the Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity… were distributing ‘arroz caldo’ to the inmates of a local jail, the Sisters noticed that an elderly inmate had thick rashes all over his body from head to toe. The old man was in great pain and discomfort because of his inflamed skin. He told the Sisters that many of the inmates have been suffering because of the unexplained rashes that their medicines and soaps could not relieve. The following day, the MC Sisters returned to the jail bringing with them a pail of herbal ointment which the Sisters prepared from the roots and barks of pangyawan. They themselves applied the ointment to the skin of the afflicted inmates. Thus, on that day, another mission was added to the Sisters’ ministry here in Davao City.”
