By Fr Shay Cullen MSSC

Fr Shay Cullen is known in Olongapo and throughout the world for his work with children and his attempts with his team of lay leaders to rehabilitate them after their horrific experience of being abused. Children have become targets of pedophiles and drug pushers and in recent years have, even at the tender age of nine, been forced into armies in Africa or as couriers in various ways. As a result Fr Shay himself has become a target by those people whose nests he has disturbed. Here he shares with us his vocation story.

When people ask me to write something about being a missionary priest I look to some special experiences that help me understand my mission as a Columban priest and discover human and social realities that challenge me to live a more meaningful life to help others.

When I first became interested in becoming a missionary priest with the Missionary Society of St. Columban I was still in high school. Before I made a decision to go to the seminary I left Ireland, became an overseas worker and got various jobs in England. The first job was in a food-processing factory, then in a hotel and later in a restaurant. A few months later I decided to follow my dream of living a more interesting and adventurous life, doing good for others in a distant land wherever that might be.

Heart for the poor

It was later when I was assigned to Olongapo City in the Philippines as a priest that I began to see the hardship of the poor people and especially the young who were in despair, surrounded by so many personal and social problems, that I saw my mission in more practical and spiritual ways.

There was a village of fisher folk close to the PREDA Justice and Center Bay on Subic Bay. I was helping them to organize themselves into Christian community and to defend their rights to their homes and land. The mayor threatened them with eviction and demolition.

After years of resistance and lobbying for justice, troops and gangs of workmen surrounded the village early one morning without warning. A little girl escaped the cordon and ran through the cemetery to call us to help. I rushed there with Alex Hermoso, our social program director. We were threatened with pointed weapons. It was too late to stop it. The demolition had begun.

Spirit of nonviolence

Despite the guns and goons of this cruel tyrant, the people stood their ground nonviolently. They linked arms and prayed. They tried to form a line to protect their shacks and shanties. Some held and hugged their crying children and defied the threats and intimidation. They refused to evacuate even when some were beaten and mauled.

They resisted even when they were dragged away and their simple homes were torn down before their eyes, their belongings scattered. The old grandmothers wept, the children cried and screamed in terror as the troops manhandled their mothers and held back the men with pointed guns. The village was two-thirds demolished in one day, homes destroyed over their heads. In the days that followed they helped each other carry away the remains of their homes to trucks, comforted and cared for each other, shared food and then were able to make a few jokes, smile and move to a resettlement that we found for them and start again. The community survived.

Where God is

Jesus was there in these people, they, the wretched of the earth, the unwanted and throwaway. He chooses to show Himself to us in them. That is where Jesus is and where I wanted to be, on their side. That’s where God’s power is.

There were many incidents when I could see Jesus revealing himself in the suffering of the victims of violence and abuse. One day a distraught teenager came to me in the parish in Olongapo. His name was Francisco and he came to make what he said was to be his ‘last confession’. He was despondent, depressed and on the verge of suicide. He had a loaded gun and was trembling and crying and ready to use it on himself and wouldn’t let me come closer. I was afraid he would get angry with me. The gun shook in his hand and I thought it would go off. I finally got him to tell me his story. It was an account of childhood sexual abuse and physical brutality. He was only ten when it began and he already endured a young life of rejection and neglect. He was made to feel guilty too, as if he was to blame and now he felt his life was worthless, he was nothing. I convinced Francisco he had friends ready to help him and stand by him. There was nothing to be guilty about because he was an innocent victim, I told him. God was with him I said and had brought him to me for help. I reassured him that his abusers would be made to answer for their crimes in all justice. He raised his head and looked at me with a glint of hope. I promised I would protect him and together we would fight the abusers. His shoulders shook and he cried and believed I would keep my promise and he trusted me enough to turn over the gun. It was fully loaded on a hair trigger.

Equal justice

There were many more similar cases like Francisco and with counseling and therapy they all recovered and found the faith and the courage to demand justice against their abusers and be healed.

Together, fighting for justice in court against the abusers, we made some dangerous enemies. That just made us all the more determined to see it through. These children courageously faced their abusers in court and relived their worst nightmares like Francisco in the courtroom. The accused frequently drew their fingers across their throats in a threatening gesture but in the end they were found guilty and sentenced to long prison terms where they could not harm other children.

It was an experience of deep healing and eventually they forgave their abusers even though the criminals had not repented. They were empowered and I felt empowered, too. When I see young victims of violence desperate for help and then responding with courage and strength I feel determined and empowered to help them all the more. I want to free them from filthy jails or sweat shops or the enslavements of brothels and sex bars and stand by them in their fight for justice.

Power from within

This is a kind of personal empowerment, like when I was with the villagers and they linked arms to hold back the armed troops and the politician’s goons with ledge hammers and battering rams. That is a powerful feeling of solidarity and unity that passed along the line to all. It helps us get through a bitter and painful injustice but it plants the seeds and the commitment to do more to prevent such power being abused and concentrated in the hands of a political tyrant.

That personal experience of God’s power flowing through that line of struggling, resisting people to me and on to others helped me realize that it had to flow on to the whole nation. Empowerment like that united the village in nonviolent resistance; it didn’t save the village but it was a powerful experience in solidarity and commitment to justice.

There was a greater experience of social empowerment when thousand and thousands of people are linking arms in faith and trust in opposing the monumental evil of violence in nonviolent and peaceful ways. They are speaking out, they are pouring out their pain and demanding redress, change and social justice. They are crying out that God’s Kingdom be realized here and now. There is an extraordinary spiritual reality that comes alive. It is real and powerful and fear is replaced with hope and courage.

Divine presence

I believe God is truly present. It is as if Jesus was standing in the temple confronting the authorities and saying to us “do this in His memory, do as I have done it, for in this there is salvation for a whole people”. Many have to be empowered and awakened to a love of justice and truth and a commitment to human and civil rights. Building the empowerment with and through victims of violence is a healing process for all and it helps unite and organize opposition to evil.

This awaking of society and empowering civil society means that the people have to be helped to recognize the roots of injustice and admire and uphold the dignity of every individual as made in the image of God with inalienable rights to be protected, respected and affirmed. This is the path to people’s empowerment.

I feel empowered when together with other victims of injustice and violence, I have been stoned and beaten, insulted and humiliated so I know what it means to be in a position of weakness and helplessness. I know too how important it is to work for empowerment through the combined mutual faith and courage of the many. Evil governments, oppressing and robbing the poor, have been brought down through such an empowered people united in their love of God, truth and justice.

Freedom in truth

One of the most inspiring passages in the Gospel reports the words of Jesus when he says, “Whatsoever you do to the very poorest of my brothers or sisters you do it to me.” It was with the outcasts and the downtrodden of society that Jesus chose above all to be with for most of his ministry. He identified with them and challenges us to discover Him in them. With this, we cannot be silent and just turn away from the abused and the oppressed poor. We, together with the poor, the victims, the deprived, have to stand in the temple of reality, speak out and end the silence that is consent to evil. The truth must confront the world, speak out from the housetops, call the killers and the torturers to repentance and act to stop their crimes against the innocent in nonviolent but effective ways. These are ways determined by time and circumstance that dig out the truth and reveal the roots of abuse and human suffering and does justice for the victims. Evil and violence have to be overcome with justice, repentance and forgiveness, there is no other way. We can work towards this despite the opposition. We are truly empowered with God’s Holy Spirit.

Being close to the victims of abuse and those on the margins of society I can feel a little of what they feel. I see their endurance and courage, and amazingly their sense of humor in the face of cruel adversity. The poor, even when beaten down, falsely accused, tortured and deprived of everything, live on to survive with their dignity, torn and tattered but intact. Jesus suffered the same, I find strength in Him as I find Him with the poor and want to help them, to be with them and take up their just cause. When I made this kind of commitment I knew I had to be ready to endure what they suffer, too. That was the challenge of being a missionary priest.

You may contact: Fr. Shay Cullen MSSC
PREDA Foundation Inc.
Human Development Center
Upper Kalakalan, 2200 OLONGAPO CITY