Month: September 2016

Columban Fr Shay Cullen wins 2016 Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award

Fr Shay Cullen

Sarah Mac Donald, 26 August 2016. CatholicIreland.net 

Columban missionary has uncovered and exposed widespread child sexual abuse and human trafficking involving children as young as 9 years abused by US personnel and sex tourists including local men.

Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty (1898 – 1963) 

from the website of the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Society.

Well known Irish Columban missionary Fr Shay Cullen has been selected as this year’s winner of the Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award. Fr Cullen has worked tirelessly over his lifetime in the Philippines battling for the rights of children to be respected and trying to stem the depredations of child traffickers, paedophiles and the sex industry.

The award was set up in honour of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish prelate, who was based in the Vatican from 1938 until 1960, and who courageously helped save the lives of 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers from the Nazis via the Rome Escape Line.

In 1974, Fr Cullen set up the PREDA Foundation to help child victims and trafficked women who were being exploited in the sex trade that flourished alongside the huge United States Naval Base on Subic Bay in Olongapo City and at the US Clarke airbase in Angeles City. He uncovered and exposed widespread child sexual abuse and human trafficking involving children as young as 9 years abused by US personnel and sex tourists including local men. Believing that poverty, violence and child abuse are barriers to peace and give rise to extremism, he strives to eliminate child abuse and promote respect for children’s rights.

He works for peace by working to change the unjust economic political and social structures and attitudes that allow such abuse. His mission for justice and peace is ecumenical; open to people of all faiths. It is based on taking a stand for human rights and protecting the dignity of every person, in particular exploited women and children.

Announcing the Hugh O’Flaherty Memorial Committee’s decision, chairperson Jerry O’Grady said, “Fr Shay has given his life to protecting the human rights of oppressed and exploited children and has fearlessly challenged those who were not prepared to shoulder their responsibilities, including local vested interests, local and national government in the Philippines and the USA Government.”

Fr Cullen said the award was a recognition of the children PREDA has rescued and “those human rights workers who, like Monsignor Hugh [O’Flaherty], continue to work for the unjustly imprisoned, the refugees trying to escape from Isis and war and those risking their lives to help them escape.”

This year’s award will be presented to Fr Shay Cullen by Councillor Brendan Cronin, Mayor of Killarney on Saturday evening November 5th 2016 at a ceremony in the Killarney Avenue Hotel.

Preda Handicrafts

Fr Shay and Preda has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received the Ireland Meteor Award, Irish Personality of the year award, German City of Weimar and Italian city of Ferreira Human Rights awards and is an internationally recognised human rights and child rights advocacy organisation for social justice, peace, dialogue and human dignity.

The People’s Recovery Empowerment and Development Assistance (PREDA) Foundation is an active social development organisation today with 54 professional Filipino paid employees implementing projects that save children from sexual abusers, human traffickers and from life in the brothels and sex bars frequented by Filipino men and foreigners of all nationalities. It provides residential care with therapy education, empowerment and legal action for the children in two centres one for abused girls in Subic, Zambales and one for the boys rescued from jails and detention centres situated in Nagbayan, Castelljos, Zambales.

Preda social workers save children from jails and detention centres and give them a new life of dignity and self-esteem. The Preda boy’s home offers protection and therapeutic homes and services for the child victims and operates a therapeutic community for boys saved from jails, ages 7 to 15 years of age. They are victims of abuse and neglect in government jails and detention centres called Bahay Pagasa.

The Preda boy’s home in Catellijos, Zambales is an open home community and family in a farm setting without fences or walls. Children are free to choose to stay or leave. Most choose to stay. They receive full support, therapy and education at the Bukang Liwayway home. There is an average of 35 children there with a full staff of 15 therapists and social workers and qualified male nurses.

Hundreds of children have been rescued from sex bars and clubs and sex abusers of all kinds: paedophiles, child rapists, cybersex bars, abusive parents and relatives. There are as many an average of 44 girls victims’ of sexual abuse and commercial exploitation 8 to 17 years-old in the Girls home in Subic, Zambales.

The Preda Girls Home in Subic provides a therapeutic home in a natural environment for children raped, sexually and physically exploited and the therapeutic life style gives full therapy, recovery, healing and educational support and family reconciliation and reintegration with supportive relatives when possible.

An Awareness and Reporting System has been activated. A hot phone line alerts Preda to a child in need and Preda rescue team is sent to rescue the child with the help of the government social worker and police if needed.

For more information see: www.preda.org and predainfo@preda.org

Fr Michael Sinnott

The first Hugh O’Flaherty International Humanitarian Award was given in 2009. The second recipient, in 2010, was Columban Fr Michael Sinnott. On 11 October 2009 he was kidnapped just outside the gate of the Columban house in Pagadian City in western Mindanao. He was released, unharmed, on 12 November that year. He was 79 at the time. He is now retired and in good health at St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, Navan, County Meath, Ireland.

The Methods of Martial Law. Fr Shay Cullen’s Reflections, 2 September 2016

The Methods of Martial Law

by Fr Shay Cullen

Bust of Ferdinand E. Marcos, Dictator of the Philippines

Built during the dictatorship, destroyed 2002 [Wikipedia]

The shocking death toll of Filipinos when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972 sent shivers through Filipino society at the time. Such widespread killing of Filipinos by summary execution had never been seen since the Japanese invasion and their severe occupation. His regime was cruel marked by brutal killings, torture, the exile of opponents, imprisonment and the disappearing of thousands. The scale of the plunder under Marcos has never been fully tallied but it is said by government estimates to be in the billions of dollars salted away abroad.

Marcos had a systematic campaign to kill dissidents, oppositionists and anyone who opposed his iron fisted rule. The debate raging this past week was about the decision of President Rodrigo Duterte to allow the burial of the late dictator’s body in Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery) in Manila this coming 18 September. The father of President Duterte served in the cabinet of Marcos and the President made an election campaign promise to allow the burial.

Libingan ng mga Bayani [Wikipedia]

The Supreme Court is holding hearings on petitions filed by victims of Martial Law to prevent the planned interment from happening, claiming that Marcos was a dictator of the worst kind and was not a hero. The body of the late strong man lies embalmed and preserved in a glass museum in his home on permanent display in Batac, Ilocos Norte.

Full post here.

‘. . . no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother . . .’ Sunday Reflections, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St Paul in Prison, Rembrandt, 1627

Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 14:14:25-33  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them,  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’  Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?  If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Manuscript of St Paul’s Letter to Philemon, c.1285

Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]

Second Reading, Philemon 9-10, 12-17

I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.

I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.

Ingemar Johansson knocks out Floyd Patterson, 1959 [Wikipedia]

Three times between 1959 and 1961, my last two years in secondary school, Ingemar Johansson, a Swede, and Floyd Patterson, an American, fought for the Undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Johansson won the first while Patterson won the succeeding fights. Those were the days when the Heavyweight Boxing Championship was followed worldwide. I remember a few times getting up at around 3am to listen to a fight on a shortwave station from the USA, lots of static and sleepiness making it difficult to listen.

What I remember clearly about the fights between these two men, who became great friends later, was that my classmates and I were rooting for Patterson, even though he was a Black American and we were White Europeans, just like Johansson. The reason was that Floyd Patterson was a Catholic. Johansson, we presumed, was a Lutheran.

Those were pre-ecumenical days but nevertheless, without reflecting on it and with perhaps more tribalism than theology involved, we were expressing something of our deepest identity, being Catholics. That identity was more important to us that any identity from where we lived or from the colour of our skin.

Portuguese and Brazilian pilgrims

World Youth Day 2016, Kraków, Poland [Wikipedia]

St Paul’s Letter to Philemon is essentially about our deepest identity. Onesimus was a slave of Philemon – this relationship was not at all of the same brutality as that between African-American slaves and their White ‘owners’ – and for whatever reason had run away. He met St Paul, who was in prison at the time and who took care of him and led him to the Christian faith and baptism.

St Paul appeals to Philemon in very moving terms: I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.

Chinese and Polish pilgrims WYD 2016 [Wikipedia]

He speaks as a father of Onesimus, whose name means ‘useful’. Indeed, St Paul was this young man’s ‘father in the faith’ as Abraham is referred to in the Roman Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer). And as an old man who is a prisoner he is appealing for the young man’s freedom.

But more than that, I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you . . . no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Paul is spelling out the implications of baptism – through that Sacrament we become brothers and sisters of each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus. This is shown explicitly, for example, in meetings of the Legion of Mary at all levels where members are addressed as ‘Brother’ or ‘Sister’. At praesidium (branch) meetings of soldiers, for example, one may be ‘General’ outside, one ‘Sergeant’, another ‘Private’. But during Legion activities they address each other as ‘Brother’.

From different countries and continents

WYD 2016 [Wikipedia]

One of my culture shocks when I came to the Philippines in 1971 was that so many families had what I saw to be servants. In some these were younger relatives who were given board and lodging in exchange for work so that they could go to school. This was a way of enabling others within the extended family to get on in life. But wealthier families had, and still have, employed workers, a driver, perhaps, a cook and some housemaids. Some of these employees stay with a family for life and truly become part of the household. The majority don’t.

I have a suspicion that some who employ a household staff would never miss Sunday Mass but, perhaps, don’t give time to their workers to go to Mass or to church. I occasionally mention in homilies that the Sunday Mass obligation includes enabling our workers to go also though, of course, we cannot force them to do so. And, along with that is our domestic workers’ right to a proper wage and to proper time off.

St Paul, who speaks of the young man as my own heart, is asking of Philemon that he forgive Onesimus for any wrongdoing, that he make him a free man, no longer a slave, and above all that he accept him as a brother in Christ.

Can there be any more intimate expression of our deepest identity than to describe another Christian as my own heart?

Daryl, 2nd from the left beside Fr Eamon Sheridan, is a Filipino-Irish parishioner in St Joseph’s, Balcurris, Dublin, which has been a Columban parish for many years. The parish, which is not a prosperous one, raised the funds to send Daryl to WYD 2016 as one of the delegates of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Fr Sheridan has worked in Taiwan, in Hong Kong as a member of the General Council and will soon be moving to Myanmar (Burma). [Photo: FB of Fr Sheridan]

Mother Teresa with Columban Fr Michael Mohally

From 4 September: St Teresa of Kolkata