Driving Force
by Denis Kizito
A DIPLOMAT FOR WHOM FAITH MATTES
Ambassador Rosalinda Valento Tirona is a woman whose simplicity and intellectual sharpness strike you as soon as you come into contact with her. Comboni Missionary Fr. Denis Kizito caught up with her recently while she was holidaying in her native Philippines.
Q. Ambassador, could we start off by asking you to give us your background in a nutshell?
A. I come from a family of four - three girls and a boy - and was born in Manila sixty-four years ago. I studied here in the Philippines, and inAustralia, Germany, U.S.A. and Thailand. I majored in Political Science and hold an M.A. in International Law and Diplomatic Studies.
I am also a writer of books like “Vietnam and Philippines Relations”, “Inspiration 21”, a compilation of poems, and “Lessons of Humanity”. I am a career diplomat and for the past thirty-six years have served in the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, India and now in Kenya, Uganda and the rest of the Great Lakes. I am also the permanent U.N.E.P. representative for Philippines at the United Nations.
Q. What do you consider to be the global challenges that humanity has to face today?
A. Poverty alleviation, gender mainstreaming, refugees, immigrants, combating transnational crimes like terrorism, trafficking of women, children, weapons, drugs and of course H.I.V. Aids.
Q. Does international law and diplomacy have a place in world politics especially after what happened during the run down to the Iraq war?
A. I will say yes and even point out that it’s the only way we have to settle our differences today. Diplomacy and international law will enable us to have a peaceful equitable settlement of disputes. It has worked before when we were miles apart, why not now? There is just the need for the political will on the diplomatic front. International law has a great role to play in the academic fields, media ventures, civil society affiliations and in religion, a divisive issue since time immemorial.
Q. So war is not a solution to our problems?
A. War is not a solution, but a disregard for humanity. We can’t afford to have another Iraq war. War destroys human efforts to build God’s kingdom here on earth and live the happier life that the children of God deserve.
Q. How has your faith helped you as a career diplomat keeping in mind you have worked in countries undergoing transformation and redefinition?
A. I must admit that my faith has been the driving force in my life as a diplomat. It has enabled me to have a higher view beyond simplistic nationalist interests. The spiritual and divine dimensions have indeed been my well of strength and courage when need arose. Personally as a diplomat I believe that when negotiating positions can’t work then we need divine intervention.
I believe that God destined me before I was born so as I could come and work with him to bring peace. I am sure of one thing, that I can’t fail because he is always with me. Prayer is a much bigger tool in my hands than guns. I consider it as foundational point of departure for justice, honesty and integrity when dealing with issues of death and life, and war and peace.
Q. So what would you consider to be the role of missionaries today?
A. I am one of those that always believed that missionaries have a very big role to play in our world. I consider them to be career spiritual ambassadors that are animated more by God’s loving creative force than by the search for material benefits. I believe that through religion they can promote human mutual understanding and become ladders to world peace so that people can embody the true image of the God they are created in.
Q. So religion is an important factor in our lives in these post modern times?
A. Yes, of course. It can help us reach greater heights of collaboration and cooperation. It can help us grow as human beings in appreciating ourselves and others. It will go a long way - as I have discovered - to strengthen our resolve to work for world peace and aim more at achieving people’s welfare than personal selfish interests. Now more than ever I find religion will act as a unifying factor where being children of one God we shall be able to promote mutual understanding of our differences.
Q. As a person keen on people’s well-being how do you think that the gap between the poor and rich countries can be bridged today?
A. I personally believe that everyone has a right to live well and that in the world we do not need to have first and second class persons. No one is more human than the other. But unfortunately our world policies seem to be creating this pattern. I believe that the poor countries should not live on foreign aid for good, we should come out and work towards a solution.
Q. What should this solution be?
A. The developing countries need to strengthen their collective reliance and make strategic options for the international level. Continue global dialogue and coalitions on different issues are also necessary. We need to help ourselves trade with each other and improve our home industries.
Q. On a more international role as a permanent UNEP representative, what can you contribute to the environmental well-being of the Philippines?
A. I do invite the authorities and the people to work on conservation, prevention of pollution and to promote sustainable management.
Q. What do you mean by sustainable management and what approach is the UNEP body taking?
A. By sustainable management I mean a scientific approach to managing the environment on a long term basis. On the UNEP front we are striving to promote ecological balance and bio-diversity. There is a call to work towards having clean drinkable water for the more than 1.1 billion without clean water. Then prevention of pollution at sea and in the cities and the depletion of the ozone layer are also concerns.
Q. On the home front all the pages of our newspaper are full of the forthcoming elections. You, as a citizen and diplomat, what do you have to say to the people?
A. I want the people to know that their vote counts. The people’s will is God’s will. I do also ask them to pray for an honest, independent and fair elections come the month of May. I do also remind the voters to be vigilant and uphold their honesty and be ready to defend God’s will of truth.
Q. What of your message to the leaders?
A. The leaders have to remember that they are elected by the people. They therefore must act as representatives and do so with the consent of the people. The will of the people they represent from the poorest to the richest has to be taken into consideration. They have to be responsible, guided by what is right.
Q. As we head for the elections, what do you consider to be the Philippines major problems?
A. Poverty, graft and corruption and crime.
Q. How can these problems be overcome?
A. To overcome them we need discipline and solidarity between the leadership and public. The leaders have to teach by right and good example, by being simple and honest. We have to go back to the fundamentals of our society, like agriculture, the economy, and the education system being well taken care of, and we have to apply our traditional values especially those of family, marriage and religion.
Q. On a more personal level, who do you consider to be the most inspiring person that you have met in your life?
A. With no doubt it’s Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. I met her in Calcutta when I was ambassador in India and I can tell you that she just oozed saintliness. She is indeed a saint. She was and will remain an extraordinary woman and I above all admired the special genuine love that flowed from her heart. May she pray for us to learn to love each other?
Q. Any word for WORLD MISSION readers?
A. I would say please read this magazine because it’s enriching to our faith and understanding of where God is calling us in his mission. It’s an inspiration to go on loving our Christian way of living and learning to be considerate and kind to our fellow human beings.
PHILIPPINES
Sharing Hope
by Chris O'Leary
The oblate mission in the philippines
Thirsty years of conflict between Muslim separatist groups and the military have done great damage to relationships between Christians and Muslims in Mindanao-Sulu. Irishman Fr. Chris O'Leary has been part of the Oblate Philippine Mission since 1969. He traces the roots of the conflict and outlines the challenging task facing peacemakers.
The Oblate mission in the Philippines began in Mindanao-Sulu, in 1939, on the eve of war. The Oblates began work immediately. A school and some parishes were up and running before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese forces attacked Manila in 1941, and moved to take control of the Philippines. The United States Army made preparations to re-take the Philippines. World War Two was now on in the Pacific.
The mission came to an abrupt halt and most of the Oblates were confined to Japanese civilian concentration camps from 1942-45.
When war ended the mission began again. The war had done its damage; people were in need. Migration from the north continued and these people needed schools and other support. They asked the Oblates to help, and from then on school and parish development went hand in hand.
Moving on
The mission has what is perhaps a surprising “Christian ring” about it, given that the Oblates here are generally associated with predominantly Muslim parts of Mindanao. The mission territory extended over 10,000 sq. miles, and included Muslims and Christians.
Christians were concentrated to the south. Initially, much of our resources were devoted to their needs. We handed this part of the territory over to the Passionists in 1957, and concentrated instead on predominantly Muslim Cotabato.
Christians and Muslims
Muslims grew uneasy as they saw increasing numbers of migrant Christians arriving. Differences in religion and culture became important. Land ownership quickly became a source of friction.
Christians saw themselves as Filipino citizens, availing legally of a Government land-distribution program. But Muslims claimed this land as part of their ancestral lands.
Tribal Filipinos, there long before the Muslims, claimed it as their ancestral heritage. Land remains a major source of conflict.
Sulu
Sulu, 98% Muslim and historically more connected to Malaysia/Sabah/Borneo, was a different experience for the missionaries. In a sense, Sulu was a “foreign mission” within the Philippines. In the beginning, the Oblates met with hostility, but when people saw that they were sincere in their readiness to respond to human needs, and not out to “convert” them, the atmosphere changed to one of “respectful acceptance”.
The two communities learned to live in a kind of peaceful co-existence in Cotabato-Sulu. Soon, however, events elsewhere would force us to look again at our presence here.
Beginnings of rebellion
In March 1968, Muslim trainees, most of them from Sulu, were massacred on an island in Manila Bay. A Marcos-AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) plan to invade Sabah, using a Muslim-commando group called “Jabidah”, had not materialised.
Evidence had to be wiped out, so the commandos were massacred. The spark was lit for Muslim rebellion.
The movement to secede from the Philippines became more forceful. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was born. Christian villages in Mindanao were attacked; the military retaliated against Muslim villages. Fanatical Muslim “Blackshirts” made war on Christians; fanatical Christian “Ilaga” made war on Muslims. Tension and fear spread.
Martial Law
In 1972, President Marcos imposed Martial Law on the country. The army was now at the heart of Muslim Mindanao, and Muslims reacted strongly. They tended to see government, military and Christians as one united group. Hostility to Christians increased as their experience of government and military worsened.
Throughout the years of Martial Law (1972-86), the situation in Muslim Mindanao progressively deteriorated for both Muslims and Christians. Political decisions and military operations made life very difficult. The influence of revolutionary ideologies grew and spawned paramilitary groups.
Hopes for peace
When Martial Law was swept aside in the “People Power Revolution” of 1986 hopes for peace were high, but things were never going to change overnight, if at all! Muslim aspirations, fuelled by mistrust of government/military and to some extent of Christians, were not going to go away.
Independence movements such as the MNLF and the MILF were realities. Indeed, the success of “Abu Sayyaf”, a small group specializing in kidnapping and extortion, remains a big problem. The failure of the military to contain them raises a host of further questions.
Muslim fundamentalism
Islam’s desire to become a world power, to counteract what it saw as American/Western Imperialism, began to influence the smallest, most remote Islamic communities.
Islamic missionaries who came to Mindanao-Sulu from elsewhere changed what had been the ordinary Muslim’s perception of Christian/Oblate presence: “these Christians are not here to serve us, they are here to convert us”. Muslim-Christian relationships were on stormy seas.
Shared suffering
No matter how difficult the context, life has to go on. We shared the experience of the people. We felt as our own the suffering, the violence, the deaths, the senseless military escapades, the injustices, the upheavals in family life, the destruction of home, land and business, the fear, the anger, the madness and hopelessness of it all.
Each family has its own story of pain and death - and we have ours. When tragedy hits home there is a new edge to it. Just to name a few:
On the 4th November, 1971, Fr Nelson Javellana OMI and 12 of his parishioners died in a politically motivated ambush.
Bishop Benjamin de Jesus OMI was shot dead in front of the Cathedral in Jolo town-centre, 4 February, 1997, in broad daylight.
Fr. Benjamin Inocencio OMI was shot and killed in Jolo, 28 December 2000, once again in broad daylight.
Justice and liberation
If “development to meet the needs of the people” was our priority in the early years (1939-1970), the 1970s pushed us to make “justice and liberation” the priority.
It soon became evident that each of the groups - Muslims, Tribal People and Christians - was quite distinct from the other two. Each had its own rights, claims, strengths and weaknesses. It was also clear that, without the cooperation and involvement of all three, there would be no answers.
Bringing the groups together in dialogue and cooperation - harboring as they do so many wounded memories and painful experiences - was, and remains to this day, a huge challenge for us.
We have begun a ministry of inter-religious dialogue with Muslims and Christians at “grass-roots” level, and ministry among the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao on the issue of ancestral tribal lands. We have also begun a ministry of peace-education/peace-action - The Non-violent Way.
Care for environment
The range of justice and peace issues in daily life in Mindanao is enormous. Dialogue could begin here, but a heavy-handed military presence means Muslims are unlikely to trust a Christian concept of justice. Islam, too, speaks of the importance of justice as a way of life, but Christians have had their suspicions about what this means, given their experiences with Muslims.
I am convinced that concern for our shared environment can and must be a real point of contact between these peoples. This is an agricultural-fishing area: care for land, rivers and sea has to be a shared concern.
The years of conflict have done enormous environmental damage. If wars rage on, accompanied by illegal logging and destructive fishing methods, there will be little left to live on or for! The environment is not an optional commitment for anyone.
Role for women
I am further convinced that real change will only happen when Muslim women find (are given) their due place in society. As things stand, a woman’s experience is hardly recognized.
Muslim mothers feel the loss of their children to war and violence; they shed tears of grief, they know the futility of war just as Christian women do.
Until they take their place in the forums of national and religious decision-making, there will be little change. Christian women are a powerful voice for good in the Philippines. This can also be true of Muslim women.
Despite the dangers
Why continue in such a dangerous place, a place where we are becoming more unwelcome! Our answer is that we have been here with these people since the beginning of the mission; we feel strongly that we must stay as a sign of hope and of the possibility for change, for everyone here.
The decision to stay is strong, even if it means death. There is a real leaving of things in the hands of God.
SRI LANKA
Public Face
by Hector Welgampola
Wanted: Catholic schools that authentically witness to the message of Christ
A Sri Lankan journalist asks whether Asia's Church schools have betrayed their vocation - or whether new situations simply demand new responses.
In Asia, the Catholic Church has three schools for every two parishes. According to Vatican-compiled data, the Church in our continent has around 20,000 parishes, which may or may not have pastors or regular services. But these same countries have more than 30,000 Catholic schools, and every one of them certainly would be staffed by at least one teacher.
The schools vary in size and number. Catholic schools in Hindu India, for example, number more than 17,000, and Islamic Indonesia has 5,350. Buddhist Thailand has 341 Catholic schools and two Catholic universities, and even the newly emerging Church in Mongolia opened half a dozen educational institutes before it got its first bishop.
All not well
Small wonder, then, that the Catholic school has been the public face of the Church, especially in the eyes of many sisters and brothers of other faiths. Along with the ministry of health care, the Church's education apostolate has long been regarded by most people in Asia as evidence of Christian service.
But all has not been well with our schools in recent times. With welfarist trends appearing in the wake of political liberation, the 20th century saw the nation state take over health care and education as public services.
Alongside this trend, the winds of change blowing across Asia after the Second Vatican Council led many clergy and religious to abandon this traditional apostolate in favor of seemingly more challenging new ones -social action, development, justice and peace.
As state-run school systems led the drive toward mass education, the politicized system in many countries spewed negative fallout on both student formation and educational standards. The few surviving Church-run schools could have offered a parallel system of holistic formation as an alternative to nationalized schools. By then, however, many of them had capitulated to the establishment or else turned toward market-driven elitist education.
Public scandal
The Church's option for upscale exclusive schools has become a public scandal. Asian Catholic "Teacher Teams" that met in July 2002 in Bangladesh observed that "mission schools have moved from their original goal of uplifting the poor and helping the underprivileged through education." The participants concluded that "we are catering to the elite."
The disappointment of those teachers was shared by Asian bishops who met two months later in Pattaya, Thailand. They deplored the tendency of Catholic schools to opt for elitist education instead of teaching the poor and engaging in faith education.
"We have lost sight of Jesus. We have lost the 'Catholic' in the Catholic school," the Archbishop of Ranchi in India, now Cardinal Telespore Toppo, told the 60 symposium participants - bishops, lay delegates, priests, Religious.
Malaysia's Bishop Antony Selvanayagam of Penang made the point plainly when he asserted that fee-levying Church schools are failing to serve the poor.
Ministry of presence
However, Monsignor Anthony Sharma, the apostolic prefect of Nepal, offered a different view in his comments about the symposium's final statement on the evangelizing potential of schools. He spoke of the "ministry of presence" of the Church through schools in Nepal and pointed out that the Church is still well regarded as the pioneer of education in the Hindu kingdom.
Father Peter Bae Kyun-min told the Pattaya symposium that Korea's five Catholic universities attract students because of their openness and academic excellence. About a week earlier, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a Buddhist, told journalists of his student days in a Catholic school, whose "religious dimension ... helped students to live an ethical life."
Different ways
The role of Catholic education clearly is not achieved in the same way in every place. The mosaic of the education apostolate has different facets that can be accentuated in response to local needs. And just as needs vary from place to place, challenges also may vary and demand specific methodologies.
For example, a Catholic school is expected to educate Catholic children in a Catholic environment with ongoing catechesis and life education. However, many Catholic schools in our multireligious countries have also educated children of other faiths and some have even produced good leaders for Asia.
Amid Asia's collapsing moral leadership, the Church in Asia cannot turn its back on the needs of the total student population. But if the Church focuses on that demanding task, will it compromise the faith education of Catholics?
Creative response
As in politics, economics and other spheres, the region's varying realities and parallel undercurrents in education should help local Churches interact, share experiences and respond creatively.
For example, the Asiawide trend to nationalize schools in the 1960s could have been exploited as a moment of grace if local Churches in Asia interacted and consulted with each other. Such sharing would have been more useful than overly depending on guidance from the mostly Western expertise in Rome.
Nearly half a century later, we are again encountering a new wave of politically gestated educational reform. New educational strategies emerging in predominantly Hindu India are seen as an attempt to Hinduize the school system and rewrite history. The recently effected national education bill in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation, has evoked protests as a subtle assault on Christian schools.
While many are justifiably agitated by these problems, more discerning sectors of these two nations, known for their deep theological insights, may also be grappling with the deeper significance of such moves.
Spirit-led
"Where is the Spirit leading the local Church?" is a question that must top their respective agendas. Should evidently political moves be seen merely at surface level, or do they call for a deeper response by pushing for the Church's fuller integration in local reality through more dynamic service?
For example, is the apparent attempt to Hinduize education an opportunity for the Indian Church to support forward-thinking Indian theologians who search for Jesus in and through Hinduism? Can Indonesia's demand that Catholic schools teach other religions be an opportunity to open up Catholic schools to a living praxis of interreligious dialogue? Are we sufficiently steeled in faith for such virile witness in our multireligious nation communities?
How should the Asiawide Church respond? When the Church in one country is confronted with such issues, the immediacy of the problem may be so consuming that deeper reflection is stifled. We need an Asian Church forum to accompany troubled local Churches with prophetic wisdom to meet such challenges, without diminishing respect for the freedom of local Church leaders.
The Asian Church also needs to demonstrate that the response to fundamentalist trends in Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam does not lie in securing the counter power base of a Christian fortress, but in "crucifixion" through sacrificial service in witness to the Gospel of love.
If, in response to current needs, Catholic education publicly testifies to what Asia's bishops proclaim as a dialogue of deeds, then our network of more than 30,000 schools would be our real public face, one that showcases Jesus.