Amid extremism and religious intolerance in today’s political conflict, the 60-year-old Notre Dame of Dulawan (NDD) here remains the heart of the interfaith community, where Christmas trees and lanterns are lit and Christmas carols are sung.
“The greater challenge for the American Maryknoll sisters then (1954) was that they would not be in Dulawan (old name of Datu Piang) to convert Muslim children, but to help bring about understanding and peace between the two groups,” wrote Sr. Patricia Marie Callan, MM, (1906-1996) in her diary on the school’s beginnings in a community that has a Christian minority and predominantly Muslim residents.
Writing from different parts of the world on their Facebook accounts, close to a thousand NDD alumni have signed up to “look back” by converging here right after Christmas Day, to join the call for peace by different sectors.
Hanalyn Sandatu-Piang, an alumnus, said she felt honored to lead a “journey to the past” by helping former schoolmates recall NDD history from old notes records and oral stories during the homecoming on Dec. 26.
60-year interfaith community
Some former NDD students said that while their experiences could not be generally told as a story of Muslim participation to celebration of Christian tradition and vice-versa, the school still existed to remind people all over the world that religious tolerance was possible, despite religion-linked cases of violence.
To Maryknoll Mothers (MM), and Oblate of Notre Dame (OND) Sisters, who have run the school, the campus has been a model of interfaith community—even at a time when the term “interfaith” was unpopular.
It was on this campus where Muslim and Christian high school students learned the right lyrics and tempo of Christmas songs, aside from the Catholic “Notre Dame Hymn” and “Notre Dame Our Mother” that were taught by the American nuns.
Classmates (Muslims and Christians) would help each other make Christmas lanterns, or even light Christmas trees in each other’s home.
Delia Saquiton-Sumail, a Catholic alumnus, said she wanted to make sure that all food served in buffets during the homecoming would be halal (permissible meat and going through a process prescribed by Islam).
Indeed, the only dividing line, but which was not being openly discussed, is on belief or nonbelief in the Doctrine of Trinity, respectively, for Christian and Muslim schoolmates. After all, Mary and Jesus are main characters in key stories told in both the Christian Bible and the Muslims’ Koran.
Reynaldo Chio, alumni president and a Catholic, said his fellow alumni, many of them Muslims, agreed to sing in chorus at least the “Notre Dame Hymn” in the morning of their whole-day homecoming.
A gathering held this month would apparently be a nonissue to Muslim graduates, even if it meant an extended Christmas Day celebration for their Christian friends and former schoolmates.
Army Lt. Col. Taharudin Piang Ampatuan, who once topped the Armed Forces of the Philippines Command and General Staff Course, said that in an organization where “biases are common,” he missed the school’s credo that mutually broke the Muslim-Christian prejudice.
“The presence of a Notre Dame [school] here was to break down the Muslim-Christian prejudice,” wrote Sister Patricia, one of the three Maryknoll sisters who opened the school in September 1954.
Armed conflict
The founding of the school started when then Mayor Datu Mentang Piang Samama negotiated with the late Bishop Gerald Mongeau, OMI, for the sale of the site on which to establish Notre Dame High School, run by the American sisters. The bishop promptly agreed.
Even in times of armed conflict, the school as a religious ground was held with respect by Muslim former students who went underground. Before the armed conflict broke in 1970, about a dozen male NDD alumni and students were reported missing. The missing young men, it turned out, were “recruited” for guerrilla training on foreign soil. They included Commanders Ronnie Malaguiok and Subuh Gayanandang, both alumni and members of the first batch of 90 Moro National Liberation Front trainees in Sabah in 1969.
Accounted for after six months, the missing former students returned here in 1971 to seek final guidance from their former classroom Catholic mentor—Sister Patricia.
At a “farewell dialogue” at the nuns’ convent, the boys left their firearms in their vehicle parked outside. So the story goes, one of them uttered: “Sister, this may be the last time that you would ever see us alive.”
First terror attacks
But even NDD was never spared the rage of the armed conflict. In 1970, retired Constabulary Capt. Jose Escribano of Tacurong sent 20 all-male new settlers from Iloilo to immerse in the local community as “workers,” and to silently observe and rescue local Christians (especially their religious leaders), whenever they were treated harshly by local majority Maguindanaon Muslims.
The Christian men returned to Escribano with nothing to report about “Muslim cruelty on Christians,” and that as strangers, they were also treated well by their Muslim employers. They also reported to their host in Tacurong that the situation was totally different in Datu Piang, “where churchgoers speak Muslim” (referring to the Maguindanaon dialect) inside Sta. Teresita Parish, which formed part of the school campus.
The fury of the militias and many martial law government forces was not as selective in other areas, like Barangay Manili in Carmen, North Cotabato province, and in Kolong-Kolong, Palimbang (now part of Sultan Kudarat province), where civilians, including women, were killed in massacres in the 1970s.
In 1975, a Maguindanaon female Muslim student was killed as she fought to resist a drunken soldier who abducted and abused her. The school’s administration of Sister Patricia, supported by a local group of Catholic women, pursued the complaint against the suspect, who was dismissed from the service during martial law.
The following year, a tragedy that would forever change Notre Dame of Dulawan took place on the first day of classes on June 14, 1976.
Two grenades were thrown at Rooms 10 and 12, one of which killed seven students—six Muslims and one Christian. Wahid Hussain and Abdulrahman Tungao died on the spot. Thirty-four other students were wounded.
The NDD Alumni Organization is planning to put up a marker in honor of the fatalities, who were among the first victims of a terror attack, based on both the literal dictionary meaning and the contemporary political and state security meaning of the word “terror.”
Because of the attack, the school was closed for one school year (1976-1977), and the Maryknoll sisters ended their tenure of the school.
NDD skipped and was unable to produce graduates in 1977, and the martial law military converted the campus into Army headquarters for about a year.
Peace, justice, equality
When the first ceasefire agreement was signed in 1977, the school ground served as “peace rendezvous” among erstwhile enemy forces (Moro guerrillas and Army soldiers), who found themselves pitted in a new fight—a peaceful sports competition. They used the school’s basketball court, built in 1963, as venue.
Bishop Mongeau sent in three OND nuns—Sisters Clarice Javier, Marie Sullivan and Zita Quintos—to reopen and run the school.
OND Sisters assigned here said that under their stewardship, “they see to it that the school, as a venue of interreligious dialogue, should in all aspects reflect social values, especially of justice, equality, respect for human dignity and love for the poor.”