The Pilgrims' Inn

Fr Francis Carey

 (19 August 1937 – 6 December 2014)

‘He had a gentle presence and a kind heart.’ That is how Fr Dan O’Malley, Regional Director of the Columbans in the Philippines, described Fr Francis Carey when he informed the membership of his death on Saturday 6 December. Father Frank was diagnosed with a form of cancer late in October. His death has been a great shock to all who knew him.Father Frank was the son of Paul and Marion Carey and was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He attended a secondary school there run by the Christian Brothers. He received his formation as a Columban in Sassafras, Victoria, and in Wahroonga and Turramurra, New South Wales. He was ordained in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, on 13 December 1962 by Archbishop Ernest Victor Tweedy, at the time the Archbishop Emeritus of Hobart, Tasmania.

St Michael’s Cathedral, Iligan City [Wikipedia]

Christ Healing the Blind, El Greco, 1570-75

 Galleria Nozionale, Parma, Italy [Web Gallery of Art]

Fr Carey’s life as a priest was guided especially by Luke 4:18-19: ‘”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,  because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”’ A friend noted, ‘Even with the ecology it was about healing, reconciling and liberating.’ Luke 4:14-19 was the gospel read at his request at the funeral Mass in Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate, Manila, on 11 December, with the passage Jesus read, Isaiah 61:1-3, as the First Reading.

 This is what guided him when he spent nearly seven years, from 1969 till 1976, in Australia, working as a chaplain to overseas students, promoting the work of Columbans throughout the world and seeking vocations to the missionary priesthood. He could be creatively practical. He once spent a month in an outback parish in Australia and told the people on his first Sunday there that he couldn’t cook and would appreciate it if each day of his stay a different family would invite him to their home for a hot meal. The people were delighted to do so and around 30 families by welcoming this friendly missionary priest learned quite a bit about the work of the Columbans in the Philippines.

On his return to the Philippines in 1976 Father Frank spent nearly a year in the parish of Tambulig, Zamboanga del Sur, before moving to Manila where he was to spend most of the rest of his life, apart from a stint on mission promotion in Australia from 1991 to 1996 in Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales. From 1981 until 1991 he worked with third-level students in Manila, with periods as chaplain in Philippine Women’s University, Far Eastern University, and with Student Catholic Action, which was founded by Columban Fr Edward J. McCarthy in the 1930s.

 Sanctuary, Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate [Wikipedia]

From 1996 till 2002 Father Frank was an assistant priest at Our Lady of Remedies Parish, Malate, Manila. The Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL) and the Eco-Farm Retreat Centre in Silang, Cavite, south of Manila, the brainchild of Columban Fr John Leydon whose vision was shared by Elin Mondejar, the owner of the land where CELL is located. Father Frank was part of this from its early days. This Center demonstrates permaculture and organic farming and zero waste management in place of landfill. Malate Parish was also involved in this project. Fr Dominic Nolan, also from Melbourne and deeply involved in the project for many years, described Father Frank as ‘the glue that kept CELL together.’

A Columban employee who visited CELL in 2009 wrote in an online tribute, ‘Thank you for giving me inspiration in advocating and living a life dedicated to nourishing the earth and everything that God put in it. I remember my short time at CELL, feeling the earth, inhaling the freshness of the surroundings, enjoying the meals that were served to us straight from the lush garden, everything. I will never forget the excitement I saw in your eyes when you munched on some mint leaves just to convince us that these things are actually good and can nourish our bodies.’ This same person, a young married woman, expressed to this writer on hearing of his death, ‘I would have loved to have asked him to adopt me!’ This echoes what St Athanasius wrote in his life of St Anthony the Abbot: ‘And so all the people of the village, and the good men with whom he associated saw what kind of man he was, and they called him “The friend of God”. Some loved him as a son, and others as though he were a brother.’

Faith in Action Keeps it Strong and Alive
Fr Shay Cullen

Children Expecting the Christmas Feast, Ferdinand Theodro Hildebrandt, 1840

The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia [Web Gallery of Art]

Christmas is the celebration of the family, the birth of Jesus and his great mission to lead the world from sin, vice and cruelty to a kingdom where people are free to live a life of virtue and goodness. Here we can be members of God’s family and strive for friendship, justice, love and peace. What a great and beautiful ideal.

The family is under great pressure these days as the cellphone, the internet and social media spread so much negative influences from child pornography, extortion, bullying and sexual grooming and abuse.

Evil has its tentacles wrapped around the minds and hearts of our youth and adults through these technological means of communication. The youth have to be helped to resist and throw off these influences and embrace a life of virtue. Adults too are under great temptation. There is even a website that encourages people to sign up to have an adulterous relationship, designed to destroy families and leave children without united parents.

Yet there are millions of families that are rooted in deep Christian values of love, faithfulness and compassionate concern that help abused, exploited people. But these too are under pressure as society is becoming more secular, frivolous and prone to vice, materialism, corruption and crime.

Love as a spiritual experience of unselfish friendship is hard to find these days. Today they are easily overwhelmed by the selfish satisfaction of personal desires, greed and lust. The great ideal of service of others through volunteering without asking for payment, rewards, praise and entitlements is diminishing. The age when thousands of young people answered the call to dedicate their lives to the service of the poor and the downtrodden is coming to an end. The age of the cheater, swindler, manipulator, betrayer and unfaithful is here.

Those who strive to lead a good and virtuous life have to strengthen their belief in eternal goodness and the sanctity of life, love, family and true faithful friends. Goodness abounds but it is not organized into a strong movement that could overwhelm the march of evil and corrupt practices of injustice and torture and abuse. The silence of good people has given a kind of consent to the triumph of evil in today’s world. As Jesus said, we have to shout it from the roof tops and take a principled stand for what is right and just.

The enemy of the people is clearly seen in the corruption, graft, kickbacks and plunder of the people’s taxes by dynastic families. The bad example from leaders permeates society and corrupts all around it. Justice is tainted and criminals go free. The incompetence of corrupt governance is apparent everywhere.

The recent expose of beaten and starving naked children lying on the cement ground like the victims of Auschwitz at the Manila children’s detention center called RAC (Reception and Action Center) caused outrage but not enough. The children photographed looked like the skeletal victims of Auschwitz. I wrote about them recently and the horrors they endured. The social workers, managers and those sworn to help them allegedly betrayed the children and their profession. Allegations of pilfered money needed for the children’s food abound but are denied. Unqualified, underpaid staff are part of the abuse. The case of Francisco is just one of many examples of starved and tortured children as revealed this week by Amnesty International in Manila. Several of the victims of torture mentioned in the report (see www.preda.org ) were interviewed in the safety of the Preda Foundation’s children’s home for rescued children in Olongapo City.

When I came as a Columban Missionary from Ireland to the Philippines 45 years ago, I saw this terrible hardship of the children in jail. I set up Preda Foundation to give them a new, happier life and try to end the torture and abuse. It seems we saved hundreds but have failed, so far, to change the systematic abuse of jailed children, illegal as it is.

In the Preda homes, children are recovering from their traumatic abuse and have told their stories of torture to researchers from Amnesty International. Most of the children were rescued by Preda social workers and myself from government detention jails. Readers can help save many more.

Social services and NGOs have not remained untouched. Some have fallen into the darkness of selfish gain, dishonesty, unfaithfulness and greed. They abandon too easily and too quickly the values they vowed loudly to uphold and defend. The malaise of the world of selfishness and greed has damaged and led astray even some of those that once worked for the higher causes of defending human rights, helping the poor and restoring the dignity of the abused.

It’s no wonder that faithful, virtuous good men and women are treasures to society, the hope of the nation and the true defenders of human rights and abused children. We can oppose and defeat evil by being faithful, honest, generous, kind, respectful of all and put our faith into action and keep it strong by serving and helping needy children this Christmas and always. 

shaycullen@preda.org, www.preda.org

Nativity (Holy Night), Corregio, 1528-30

Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany [Web Gallery of Art]

Fr Francis Carey

(19 August 1937 – 6 December 2014)

Fr Frank Carey died in hospital in Manila on Saturday 6 December at 6:20pm. He had been diagnosed with a form of cancer in October. His death is a great shock to all of us. Fr Dan O’Malley, Regional Director of the Columbans in the Philippines, said of him, He had a gentle presence and a kind heart. Many would describe him in those or similar words.

Father Frank is being waked at St Columban’s, 1854 Singalong Street, Manila, until Wednesday at 4pm when his remains will be taken to Remedios Jubilee Center, Malate, Manila, for the vigil. The funeral Mass will be on Thursday at  10:45am in Our Lady of Remedies Church, Malate, followed by burial in Loyola Memorial Park, Sucat, Parañaque City.

The following appeared in the November-December 2012 issue of The Far East, the magazine of the Columbans in Australia and New Zealand, to mark the Golden Jubilee of the ordination to the priesthood of Father Frank.

Fr Francis (Frank) Carey was ordained by the Archbishop Tweedy of Hobart on December 13, 1962 in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Victoria. He arrived in the Philippines in September 1963.

He has spent most of his 50 years of priesthood in the Philippines. He also spent some years of service in Australia as chaplain to overseas students, vocations Co-ordinator and doing mission promotion and education in the dioceses of Rockhampton, Canberra/Goulburn and Armidale.

In 1996, Fr Francis was a Co-founder of the Center for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL) and the Eco-Farm Retreat Centre outside Manila. This Centre demonstrates permaculture and organic farming and zero waste management in place of landfill.

Fr Francis is the son of Paul and Marion Carey, of Melbourne, Victoria. He trained for the priesthood in Sassafras, Victoria, and Wahroonga and Turramurra, NSW.

He currently resides in the Filipino mountain city of Baguio. 

May Father Frank rest in peace.

An obituary will be posted later.

The Universal Desire for Justice.

By Fr Shay Cullen

MV Sewol, 16 April 2014 [Wikipedia]

Seoul, Korea.

It was frosty cold standing in the center Island of the broad avenue in Seoul, Korea, leading to the historical palace and presidential house. There I met one of the grieving parents of the Korean ferry,MV Sewol, disaster. There is a protest encampment set up there where supporters and sympathizers come and stay and pray and demand justice for the families and victims of this terrible tragedy. There is a high sense and awareness of human rights and frequent democratic protests are held here in Seoul. But all are allowed to demonstrate continuously, peacefully or noisily without police crackdowns.

At the solidarity camp on the traffic island the father of a student who was killed in the sinking of the ferry boat told me through an interpreter how the parents cannot accept the inaction of government. They want government to redress fully the injustice and the terrible wrong behind the sinking of the ferry and the loss of so many young people and adults. He handed me a solidarity badge, a yellow folded ribbon. The high school students who died look out from the assembled 300 photographs at the temporary shrine to their memory. Their silent stares tell us of the enormity of their loss and greatness of the crime.

The MV Sewol, on 16 April 2014, sank with a complement of 500 passengers and crew. The ferry  was bought from a Japanese ferry company with only two years of life left as a passenger ferry but the shipping company used questionable methods to force through a change in the law so the ferry could get a license to carry passengers beyond its normal life. Together with illegal structural alterations to carry more cargo, the ferry was top-heavy and capsized. The Captain and some  of the crew have been jailed and the family of the owner are being arrested and charged. Justice is the overwhelming desire of the families of the students who died. 

MV Doña Paz [Wikipedia]

In the Philippines justice is hard to come by. As many as 4,386 Filipinos perished in the greatest peacetime maritime disaster ever when the MV Doña Paz, a ferry boat, owned by Sulpicio Lines, out of Tacloban, Leyte, sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on 20 December 1987.  Only 24 people survived. The ship was way over its seaworthy life and built for 608 passengers.

The ship was rebuilt after a fire, unlicensed, grossly overloaded and had no qualified captain or officer on duty on the bridge when the collision occurred leading to the deaths of thousands. The Philippine Board of Marine Inquiry eventually cleared Sulpicio Lines of all liability, fault and negligence for the accident stopping short of sympathizing with the owners of the shipping line.

No one was arrested, tried or found guilty of negligence or held responsible for the deaths of so many. Everything is negotiable in the Philippines if you are rich and powerful. Little compensation was paid to the family members of 4,386 people who perished.

The families of the 162 victims who died and 93 severely burned people of a Manila disco fire had to wait 18 years and eight months to get justice this past week. Small as it is with the sentences of seven Quezon City engineers and two businessmen to ten years each. Philippine Justice is hard to come by. All is negotiable except for the poor.

Last week a child, Angie, from Botolan, Zambales  with the mental capacity of nine year old, as testified by the resolution of the prosecutor Emelyn T. Nacin-Catolico in April  2011,  had been cruelly raped with fear and threats  by a pedophile and the case referred to the Regional Trial Court in Iba, Zambales.

Now three years later a new prosecutor, Olivia V.Non-Finones, instead of prosecuting the rapist pressured the child to sign an affidavit withdrawing her compliant. Such an affidavit of desistance is forbidden by order the Philippine Department of Justice and the Supreme Court has ruled many times that such affidavits of desistance have no weight whatsoever.

Nevertheless the judge, Marifi P.Chua, accepted the affidavit in court and stated in dismissing the rape charge against the accused that since the affidavit was based on the fact the rapist undertook  and promised not to rape again, the female judge dismissed the case and the accused  was allowed to walk free to do it again. The child was denied justice and more children are at risk.

Here in Seoul many welcome the UN resolution, approved by 111 countries, to send the leaders of North Korea to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity. Investigations and interviews with escapees from repressive North Korea led to a special UN report in February 2014 that provides evidence for the allegations of the crimes of systematic murders, torture, beatings, starvation, rape, forced abortions and unjust imprisonment of up to 120,000 people.

These issues and revelations have given an increased sense of obligation among the many South Koreans to do more to help  the less fortunate in North Korea and in developing countries. The desire for justice is universal and a nation without it is not a fully civilized nation but close to a failed state. 

This is perhaps why South Koreans are embracing and expanding their interest in social justice and buying Fair Trade products from developing nations like the Philippines dried mangos fo small farmers and the indigenous people.  They have a growing moral conscience about the exploitation of  the poor and the duty to help.

Fair trade is a rapidly growing sector in civil society and among Christians in many countries. The UK, Ireland, Germany and Austria are among the most active. The movement in Seoul has a strong supporter in Mayor Won Soon Park who  hosted in Seoul The Global Social Economic Forum this month to boost the social commitment of Koreans and foster international cooperation and Fair Trade. All of us can do our share to help make justice the heart of  faith and life.

shaycullen@preda.org, www.preda.org, www.predafairtrade.net

Fair Trade and the social teachings of the Catholic Church

by Fr Shay Cullen

One of the most well-known success stories of Preda Fair Trade is its action to alleviate poverty and oppose the evil trade of human trafficking by implementing the social teachings of the Church. Living out in action these spiritual and social values is a great challenge to Catholics and Christians of all denominations.

Pope Francis has spoken clearly on the need for economic justice in the world. He said that he wants a Church that is poor and for the poor. In his apostolic exhortationEvangelii Gaudium, he grounded this goal in Jesus Christ, who became poor and was always close to the poor and the outcast’ (No 186).

The selling of young people into bars and brothels under the guise and cover of ‘entertainer’ is a modern form of human slavery. Thousands of Filipinos are being sold into this evil form of trade in Asia and Korea is one major destination. Ten thousand Filipinos are reported to be trafficked into Korea, according to one university study.

Preda Dried Mango

Unless we act for children and the youth, and they are allowed to be exploited and abused without our action to help them, then our faith, teaching and  evangelization will have little impact and inspiration for the youth today. Perhaps that is why so few go to church. That is why Fair Trade is the long-term sustainable vehicle for delivering social and economic justice to the poorest of the poor. It makes them independent and self-reliant.

Korea and Japan are prime destinations for these young girls, many said to be minors but disguised as adults with fake documents and make-up. The goal is to save victims and uphold the dignity of women and children and provide economic alternatives in their home villages in the Philippines.

The goal of Preda Fair Trade is to curb human exploitation of every kind and promote the human rights of rural poor and workers and help exploited and the oppressed people. This is at the heart of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. The Preda Fair Tradeproject aims to prevent human trafficking and sex slavery by teaching the people the values of the gospel and the dignity and rights of every person, especially the rights of women and children.

Preda Dried Manog (Sugar-free)

It also provides livelihood projects to poor families such as organic mango production, fair prices and bonus payments for every small-scale farmer for their mango fruit. Preda Fair Trade also provides water-pumps, bicycles and educational assistance to children. Small-scale farmers are given mango tree saplings and coconut seeds to improve their production. A portion of the earnings from sales of Preda dried mangoes of Preda Fair Trade goes to help child victims of sex trafficking and abuse in Preda therapeutic homes. Preda dried mangoes are widely available in supermarkets in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

By buying the mangoes of small farmers and indigenous people at high, fair prices and paying a bonus to each farmer, Preda Fair Trade is slowly eliminating exploitation and poverty. It is the cruel poverty and social injustice that makes so many impoverished villagers eager to allow their children go to work in cities in the Philippines and abroad. Most don’t know the dangers.

The practice and example of economic justice in fair trade is a form of evangelization in word and action. It is by example of giving justice and fairness that Preda has credibility with the people and society. As St James writes, Faith without action for justice is dead. The Church has a duty to implement the social teachings proclaimed by Jesus and the Popes for generations, Pope Francis in particular, and Fair Trade is one great way to do it.

Preda Dried Mango-Tamarind

The work to protect women and children from sex slavery is a priority. The Preda Foundation has homes that are therapeutic healing centers for child victims and a Preda legal office prosecutes abusers and traffickers through the courts. A percentage of the earnings from the sale of the dried mangoes and other fair traded products helsp fund these services for the victims rescued from Filipino sex bars and brothels.

The evil trade begins when the young women and children are recruited in Filipino villages or towns by human traffickers who promise them good jobs in factories and hotels or as singers and dancers in Korea and elsewhere. They pay part of the’salary’ in advance to the parents and relatives of the young women so they are obligated and become victims of ‘bonded’ labor.

The sex bars are situated near US bases like Camp Stanley. The girls have to sell a certain number of ‘juicy’ drinks to customers and are pressured to give sexual favors to the customers in small rooms at the back of the bars or in nearby cheap hotels. In some cases it is rape as the girls have never expected this and do not consent to it.

The development and promotion of Preda Fair Trade is a most effective way for Catholics to use their buying power to make a strong faith-based commitment and statement for social justice. Faith can be more alive every time they choose to buy a Fair Trade product knowing it is not the product of child labor, exploitation or cheating the producers. They will know it is based on fairness and concern. They will learn too from the information given with the products about the needs of the poor and the positive help that Fair Trade gives to them and what more they can do to help.

shaycullen@preda.org   www.preda.org

[Photos from Preda Fair Trade Products]