Implications on int’l missionary congregations

We from the Religious Discernment Group are utterly dismayed on the injustice done to one of our conveners, Sister Patricia Fox, NDS.

While we already expected that the Bureau of Immigration will deny her motion for reconsideration, we are still hoping that the commissioners would be enlightened and Sister Pat will be accorded of her right to due process and equal protection of the law.

We are one with Sister Pat in her conviction that “the vocation of consecrated persons and all Christians as missionaries is to proclaim God’s love for all peoples especially the poor…”

Her participation in gatherings of farmers, indigenous peoples and workers are not partisan political activities but are expressions of the missionary work to help promote and protect the rights of the poor and the needy.

We are challenging the injustice done to Sister Pat for we see its implications on international missionary congregations with members who are foreigners in the country and who participate in activities in solidarity with the poor.

We have known Sister Pat since 2009 and we admire how she has been responding faithfully and fearlessly to her religious calling.

She is a courageous advocate for the right to life and human dignity. Her missionary journey with the people she loved and cared so much for is a concrete way of living out what Pope Francis said in his World Mission Sunday 2017 message: “We should prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.”

SISTER LYDIA LASCANO, ICM, SISTER REBECCA PACETE, MMS, SISTER LYDIA EBORA, RGS, conveners, Religious Discernment Group