1 dream, 100 years of Iloilo’s St. Paul hospital

On the rainy morning of Feb. 15, 1911, four Frenchwomen, all belonging to the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres and their wimples drooping in the downpour, alighted from a boat at the port of Iloilo.

They were found quarters in a derelict warehouse on Rosario Street across from the town plaza, where they slept on the floor beleaguered by ants and mosquitoes.

They lost no time in setting up a clinic for the poor in that same warehouse, armed with an unshakable faith, boxes of medicines and a few rudimentary medical instruments they had brought with them from St. Paul’s Hospital in Intramuros, Manila, whence they had come.

It did not matter that the pioneering nuns could not speak the language of their patients. They had hands that healed and a great supply of quinine, aspirin and medical potions. They were heroic and self-sacrificing. They were made of the stuff of saints who sometimes drank the water from the washing of the bandages of patients’ wounds, and occasionally founded new religions.

The nuns, however, were not that quirky or that quick to incorporate. But their saintly work gave rise to St. Paul’s Hospital Iloilo (SPHI). And for the next 100 years, the St. Paul Sisters—in 1964, young Filipino nuns completely took over the administration of the hospital from the aging French madres—dedicated themselves to “compassionate and trusted care.”

It is the hospital’s proclaimed quality of service.

Dougherty’s dream

SPHI has reached out beyond the one dream of Dennis Cardinal Dougherty—to put up a Catholic hospital in Iloilo, primarily to counteract the benign but insidious (to Catholic evangelization) influence of Lutheran Protestantism during the US regime in the country. (The American Dougherty served as bishop of Iloilo from 1908 to 1916 and went on to become archbishop of Philadelphia in the United States.)

The irony of religious differences competing for good works and a mission of mercy for the people to counteract each other’s benign influences is difficult to rationalize, but it happened that SPHI would forge ahead to become one of the most modern, fully equipped tertiary hospitals on Panay Island, instrumental in improving the health and well-being of Ilonggos and strengthening their community and family structures.

The hospital’s journey from the now dormant and dull Calle Rosario to its present location on General Luna Street in the bustling heart of Iloilo City, beside the sprawling St. Paul University, which SPHI gave birth to, is the theme of my newly launched book, “St. Paul’s Hospital Iloilo: One Hundred Years of Healing the Body, Nurturing the Spirit.” It was designed by Dopy Doplon, with photographs by Ramon Jeffrey Florendo.

The narrative of this epic journey, fraught with rich undercurrents of historical, social and religious upheavals, I’ve tried to keep straightforward and straight-faced.

Any writer commissioned to do this book would strive to steer the story from the pious, the melodramatic, the emotional—or how could one write about a hospital run by nuns whose essential mission is “compassion” for the poor? And to “humanize” the hospital’s technological advances through the decades—or how could one make interesting reading the functions of the various departments and ancillary services, and the acquisitions of equipment that make a thoroughly modern medical institution?

‘Father’

Still, the book stumbles once in a while into pious and maudlin anecdotes and passages—a concession to my religious patrons. Not that I could help it: I am an ex-Augustinian seminarian, and that conviction (criminal or otherwise) has branded me for life.

When I was working on the book, the nuns, accosting me in the hallways, would call me “Father.” I did not try to correct them. It gave me opportunities for certain …  confidences?

In the book, I tried to do away with dreary archival stuff. (Nuns like the Paulinian Sisters are very good at doing archival research, and their work has been published in books by their congregation.) I instead focused on interesting people and human-interest anecdotes that would illustrate the nuns’ efforts and sacrifices, that would give humanity to the hospital’s history.

There’s the miracle of St. Hannibal for a patient who would have suffered amputation. The bakery that to this day serves the bread and biscuits of the Sisters. Their exploits during the Japanese Occupation.

The French nun who, in the humility of her heart, stayed behind in Iloilo to tend to the pigs and chickens in the convent backyard. The 50-year-old, black G.A. Braun washing machine that can still take on a load of 50 kilos per cycle. The doctors, nurses and personnel who have made SPHI what it is today.

There are the nuns who, you would have thought, could do nothing better than counting the beads on their rosaries.

There’s the frail-looking Sr. Marie Pierre, who handed sweets from the pockets of her habit to anyone she’d meet looking miserable or worried, and who had the man-sized job of directing the cardio, digestive and rehab departments. And there’s Sister Christine, who looks so stern you quake in your shoes as you approach her—and then she breaks into laughter that shakes the shelves of sterile supplies behind her.

The photos don’t dwell on the impressive structures and technology; most importantly, they do not romanticize, through clever lighting and angles, the ailments, pains and agonies that send people to the hospital. The photographer’s camera shows great empathy with children and babies, who are the last of God’s beautiful things we’d like to see bundled pathetically in a hospital, attached to frightful apparatuses.

Crowning glory

SPHI’s centennial crowning glory is the new St. Paul’s Integrated Center of Expertise (Spice), which houses, in a new three-floor building annexed to the old building, the core competencies of SPHI, including the fully equipped Kidney Center, the first ever on Panay.

“You don’t have to go to Manila for a kidney transplant,” declares Sr. Linda Tanalgo, SPC, “the SPHI centennial administrator,” as she’s called in the book.

Sister Linda’s one great achievement would be the Spice building. She kept delaying the publication of the book because her funds were all going to the completion of the building and equipping it in time for the centennial festivities.

Initially she checked me into a hotel room during the occasions I was in Iloilo to do research and interviews for the book. Later she put me up in a room, which I shared with my photographer, in the old Mere Monique Home.

The room had narrow monastic beds and no TV. But at least it was air-conditioned and had hot-and-cold water—and provided a perspective on the ghosts of departed nuns floating in the dark halls.

The prospects of my book ever seeing the light of day became dimmer when, apparently as a test of her humility and vow of obedience, Spice being near completion, Sister Linda was transferred to St. Paul’s Hospital in Dasmariñas, Cavite.

She was replaced by Sr. Rosamond Marie Abadesco, SPC, who was completely ignorant of the book project. But to her credit, Sister Rosamond saw the merits, if not the inevitability, of the book, and rustled up enough funds for its publication—probably after promising to offer prayers for the health and success of the printers in return for a substantial printing discount.

New Home

There is a new Mere Monique Home in Ticud at the outskirts of Iloilo City, now home to 35 elderly women.

One of the most moving anecdotes told me by Sr. Philip Galeno, SPC, the superior of Mere Monique Home, was that of two nuns who every afternoon pulled out their bags that contained their few clothes and belongings from under their beds and then arranged themselves on the bench at the portico of the Home to await the bus that would take them home to Dumaguete.

After some 240 pages, the book ends with a photo of the Centennial Twins, Charl Ernest and Chyll Eman Amianes, the first babies born in SPHI on Centennial Day, Feb. 15, 2011, which I (sappily) captioned: “From the mouth of babes: The twins doubly affirm that the SPHI Centennial is just the beginning of a new day.”

Another photo shows me and my granddaughter Helena, who was a year old when I started to write the book, and who marked her third year three months before it was launched this month.

For inquiries on “St. Paul’s Hospital Iloilo: One Hundred Years of Healing the Body, Nurturing the Spirit,” e-mail [email protected], log on to www.stpaulshospitaliloilo.com, call 63(033) 3372741, or fax 63(033) 3351177.