Sr. Patricia Fox attends a mass at St. Peter Parish in Commonwealth Quezon City.
PHOTO BY EDWIN BACASMAS
Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David on Wednesday defended Australian missionary Sister Patricia Fox from criticism that she was an “undesirable alien.”
“She’s not a drug smuggler or trader. She’s not into child trafficking. She’s not part of a foreign cyberscamming group posing as a call center company. She’s not part of a foreign company that’s into open pit mining. She’s not an arms dealer or a terrorist,” David said in a Facebook post.
“She just happens to care for the poor in this country. Does she deserve to be deported as an ‘undesirable alien?’” he added.
The Bureau of Immigration earlier ordered Fox’s deportation for being an undesirable alien and for violating the terms of her missionary visa.
Bishop Arturo Bastes of Sorsogon said the immigration order only confirmed the “suspicion” that the government was “systematically harassing people who criticize [its] policies.”
“This is a very sad development… I am ashamed of the government,” Bastes said in a post on CBCPNews, the official news service of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. —Tina G. Santos