100 years of making God’s love visible

A historical accident happened in Baguio City, which a Maryknoll nun describes as part of “how God works.”

Three years after the Maryknoll Sisters arrived in the Philippines in 1926 to establish what was then called Catholic Teachers’ Normal School, they came to Baguio and eventually built a convent on a 2.8-hectare lot atop a hill in Barangay Campo Sioco.

Completed in 1929, the convent was originally designated as a retreat and vacation house.

But in 1933, a Syrian mother living in Baguio pleaded with the sisters to tutor her three gradeschool children. More children came the next year, and thus began what became Maryknoll Convent School, which was renamed Marishan School in 1977.

“Such historical accident became a major turning point and that’s how God works,” says Sr. Margarita Jamias. She heads the coordination of the centennial celebration of the Congregation of the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic in Baguio.

The congregation was founded on Feb. 11, 1912, by a group of Catholic nuns in the United States led by Sr. Mary Josephine “Mollie” Rogers of Massachusetts, who came to be known later as Mother Mary Joseph.

The sisters opened another school in 1947 in Barangay Atab, just 4 kilometers from downtown, to address the formal literacy of Ibaloi children.

The Maryknoll nuns’ continuing literacy program was much welcome in a city that was then picking up the pieces after its devastation during World War II.

Along with other institutions which made their mark in education and other fields, Baguio officials awarded and recognized Maryknoll as one of its builders during the city’s centennial celebration in 2009.

Schools, hospitals

Since they arrived in the Philippines in 1926, the Maryknoll Sisters have made a difference in the fields of education and health. They opened Catholic Teachers’ Normal School in Malabon, which later transferred its campus and became Maryknoll College.

Renamed Miriam College in 1988 and although ownership of the institution changed hands almost 12 years earlier, the college was “probably the best known of our educational work in the Philippines,” says a flyer about the Maryknoll centennial.

The nuns also opened schools in other provinces, such as Quezon (Lucena City), Batangas (Lipa City), Laguna (Pakil town), Isabela (Santiago City), Misamis Occidental, Maguindanao, Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental and Surigao del Sur.

One of their significant contributions was extending their educational program to Muslim communities in Mindanao, thus proving that as early as the 1950s, Christians and Muslims could relate well and work with each other.

At Notre Dame of Dulawan in Datu Piang, Maguindanao, the first graduates in 1957 were 16 Christians and 15 Muslims.

The Maryknoll Sisters devised a workable arrangement in which religion would not hinder the education of both Muslim and Christian youths. In the beginning, while Catholic religion classes were going on in Notre Dame, the Muslim students were excused and given study period.

“As time went by, an ustadz [Islamic teacher] was employed by the sisters for the Muslim students,” according to the 2001 book, “Maryknoll Sisters in the Philippines,” co-authored by Virginia Fabella and Dorothy Mulligan, both Maryknoll sisters. “Eventually, a building which could be used as a mosque was provided for their prayer and Friday service.”

The nuns also made God’s love visible through their health apostolate.

They took over St. Paul’s Hospital in Intramuros, Manila, in 1927, which had been directed by the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres since its founding in 1905.

Shift

In the 1980s, they handed most of their educational and other institutions to local lay leaders. But they continued to serve in many fields, including education, medicine, ecology, communications, agriculture, social services and spiritual formation, Jamias says.

They now work in smaller numbers and in what Jamias calls “nonstructured ministries,” such as basic Christian communities, nonformal education, leadership training, advocacy work, income-generating projects, women empowerment, and assistance to migrants and people with HIV/AIDS.

In Baguio, the Maryknoll Sisters phased out its grade school (Marishan School) in 1999. After the Maryknoll Convent was flattened during a killer-earthquake in 1990, they decided it was time to shift to a new mission.

The school and convent have since been transformed into what is now called the Maryknoll Sisters Center for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation or the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary.

The center now serves as educational center for environmental management and what it calls “cosmic spirituality.”