Sr. Patricia Fox: No regrets for 27 years in PH

Sr. Patricia Fox meets with Commission on Human Rights chair Chito Gascon, who attended solidarity Mass for her. The CHR en banc said in a statement that it hopes that recent events are not forms of discrimination, considering attacks vs human rights defenders. Jhesset O. Enano/INQUIRER

Sr. Patricia Fox, the embattled Australian missionary who had angered President Duterte, said on Saturday that she did not regret anything in her years of stay in the Philippines.

She expressed sadness, however, over the possibility of leaving the country that had been her home for the past 27 years.

“I’m smiling on the outside, but I’m really sad inside,” she told reporters at the sidelines of a solidarity Mass for her at the Parish of the Holy Sacrifice in the University of the Philippines in Diliman.

“It’s been my home for years. I enjoy being with the people here.”

Fox was given 30 days by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to leave the country for allegedly violating the terms and conditions of her missionary visa. Immigration officials cited her supposed participation in “partisan political activities.”

While the scope of these activities was not clearly defined, BI documents supposedly showed Fox participating in rallies, press conference and fact-finding missions.

“I joined the fact-finding mission to talk to people down there,” she said, referring to the international mission in Mindanao in April. “I was there to listen, but somehow rather, that’s part of my being partisan (and) political.”

But Fox said her active engagement with poor farmers and marginalized folk was not something she regretted doing.

“It was sort of natural to me, because they were people who were (being oppressed),” she said.

As a lawyer in Australia, she had naturally fostered the advocacy to help others, she added.