By Fr. Brendan O’Connell

I met Pilar Tilos in 1963 in Hinoba-an, Negros Occidental. It was my first year as a priest and her first as a teacher. We have been friends ever since. She was one of the first group of lay people to become actively involved in the Church in Southern Negros in the Philippines. Through the legion on Mary and other mandated organizations of the sixties she helped prepare Hinoba-an for the tremendous changes that were to come.

She always claimed that she learned different values from the different priests who came after me. From Bob Burke she learned ‘action now’. from Joe Coyle in the seventies interpersonal relationships, from Michael Martin in the eighties a passion for social justice.

All of these things came together for her in the events describe in the Australian Far East article in January 1982 called “Two Weeks in August in Hinoba-an”. In the midst of the reign terror of the Marcos military, Pilar and Des Quinn organized a protest over the cruel torture and killing of innocent Rudy del Carmen.

I remember that during the meetings, preparing for the protest. Pilar left several times to go privately to an adjoining room. Later she told me that she had left to cry. “Why Cry?” I asked. “Because of the dedication and love of you guys for my people” she replied, and ran away.

In the early eighties the four most southerly parishes in Negros formed a unit to share knowledge, resources, seminars, etc. (It was called Hibasin for Hinoba-an, Bacuyangan, Sipalay and Inayanan.) Most of our meetings were held ad a unit and even priests meetings had a lay coordinator from each parish attending to ensure maximum participation and communication. It was through Hibasin that both Pilar and I became more aware of the situation in which we lived and sought ways of making Christ incarnate there. I was in Inayawan, Pilar in Hinoba-an.

So great was Pilar’s influence that the active lay people in Hinoba-an were called “Sila ni Pilar”. Pilar grew through Hibasin in the eighties. As well as a person of deep faith and action, she develop as fun loving, playful, joyful and a lover of God in the good things in life, like the sea and mountains and trees where she was born and live in beautiful Hinoba-an.

She naturally moved on towards the Columban lay missionary movement in the late eighties and went to Pakistan in 1990. I visited her there in 1994 on my way to Ireland. She took me to “Shadbagh” (Joyful Park) in Lahore where her mission was situated. In the time of the Moguls it was one of the forty parks in Lahore. When I was there in 1994 I wrote that it is “one of the poorest areas that I have ever seen in my life.” However having spent some time there with Pilar I wrote “It is now a joyful in their faith. That is, to a large extent, due to our Columban lay missionaries like Pilar Tilos.”

Pilar was in Pakistan when her good friend Joe Coyle died in the Philippines in 1991. She was shattered by the fact that she was too far away to attend the funeral and that the expense was prohibitive. She said that she experienced the sadness many of us missionaries feel when our friends and colleagues die in every corners of the world.

In January this year Pilar herself died in Pakistan. Word came through that her Filipino friends and companions in Hibasin are inconsolable with grief. However “Sila ni Pilar” will continue to grow. Unquestionably some of them will follow her to countries far away to share their faith with others. Undoubtedly some of them will die there too.