By Father Francis Chapman

Father Francis Chapman, now 90, came to the Philippines as a Columban missionary in 1938. He hears confessions regularly in St Augustine’s Cathedral, Cagayan de Oro. Here he recalls an incident from nearly 60 years ago.

May in Mindanao is a hot month. For the priest it’s also a busy one. That day there had been a barrio fiesta. The barrio wasn’t large but had done its best to celebrate the feast day of its patron, San Isidro Labrador, with becoming solemnity. Almost every house had put on a feast. Visitors came from far and near. The late Mass was sung. A band accompanied the long procession immediately following the statue of the San Isidro. The statue itself was attached to a float and carried over the fields on the shoulders of four able-bodied farmers. Then a large number of children from the village were baptized.

Magnificent in its own way, but fatiguing. It was with a feeling of relief that I neared home. It was a couple of hours’ journey and the sun blazed down fiercely enough to split the rocks along the uneven track. As home came in sight I saw a small girl standing at the door of the sacristy. She came quietly over to the house as I eased myself from the saddle. In a cheerful voice that belied my inner feelings, I asked her what her message was.

It was scarcely necessary to ask. May, besides being a month of barrio fiestas, catechism classes and special devotions, is also a month for sick calls.  And Mercedes, for such was her name, came to fetch me for her eldest sister who was ill. The illness was aggravated by diwindis - perhaps we could call them fairies. It’s seldom you hear of diwindis, but they can be very real to a person suffering from nerves.

There were the usual preliminary questions. Is the case urgent? Yes. Where is the house? About an hour’s paddling along the bay. Do you have a boat? Yes. It took a few minutes to pack the sick call kit and place the Blessed Sacrament in the pix. Then Mercedes was leading me towards the baybay. Reaching it, she indicated her boat ­– a little canoe-like structure with outriggers on either side, known in that district as a tango. We slid this light shell along the mud till we reached water deep enough for it to float with the two of us aboard.

It was only then that I began to see something unusual in Mercedes. It is very seldom that a small girl will be sent to fetch a priest on a sick call. And never before had I been conducted by boat to a sick call when the complete crew of the boat was a small girl. And be it said to my shame, that she was the complete crew and I only a passenger. For when I insisted on taking the paddle for a stretch, I surrendered it in jig time to avert a capsize.

We paddled quietly along. Yes, obviously, Mercedes was an unusual girl, quiet, competent and self-possessed. My admiration for her grew by bounds as, with great economy of words, she told a little bit of herself and her errand. She was eleven. She had not yet made her First Holy Communion. She had gone to school only for a few years, but it was to state school. She knew her prayers and recited them everyday. Some time during the War she had seen the nuns and knew that they conducted a school in a nearby city. Her sister had eloped and gone through some form of marriage – not before a Catholic priest. Now this sister was at home seriously ill. It took one or two people constantly to hold her down. She could see a phantom pursuing her.

No neighbors were sufficiently interested to call the priest so Mercedes had got a tango and set out herself.

The house was built over the sea. Mercedes moored the boat to one of the poles that supported the house and we climbed from the tango to the kitchen. I attended to the spiritual needs of the patient and had the comfort of seeing her fears abate.

That was the last I saw of Mercedes. Her work was done. It was growing late in the afternoon.  A strong wind had blown up and two men from neighboring houses paddled me home. They may not have been sufficiently interested in the patient to fetch me, but with their innate respect for the priest, they were more than ready to see him safely home. And it proved to be hard work. Against the tide and the wind it wasn’t easy to paddle. And they had to take a larger, heavier boat because the bay was now troubled with white caps.

My companions took back some prayer books, medals and pictures for Mercedes and her sister. The sister recovered. I was shifted to another parish shortly after this incident and heard news only at rare intervals. Of Mercedes I heard no more except that in later years she married.

Apart from the consolation of meeting one so young and yet with so great an appreciation of spiritual things, the incident stands out in my mind chiefly for a remark of Mercedes as we paddled to the sick call. She said with great seriousness, ‘I wish I could go to the Sisters’ school.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘So that I could be innocent,’ she replied.

There are many, many like Mercedes in the Philippines and elsewhere, with the same wish, the same hunger to be in an atmosphere of prayer and devotion to our Immaculate Mother. And all of us yearn to satisfy the hunger of these youngsters. God grant that we may be able to help the missions more and more to fight this great fight.