Pia, Poor Clares and HIV/AIDS

LAST JAN. 20, the Inquirer’s Lifestyle section published a short article on the visit of Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach to the Monastery of St. Clare in Kidapawan City. There she prayed, met its nuns and asked them to pray for her in her journey to the United States to participate in the Miss Universe pageant. She won and will reign as Miss Universe this year. The prayers were answered because of what she would do next.

Soon after she was proclaimed winner, she revealed her advocacy for persons with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)/AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), especially those in our country, and she volunteered to undergo the test for the virus to encourage many of our people to do the same. Her advocacy is most welcome and needed. The Inquirer’s Jan. 26 editorial (“Badly needed”) mentioned that, according to the World Health Organization, the Philippines has the fastest-growing number of persons with AIDS in the world, with “a total of 29,079 HIV infections in October last year, with more than 24,000 just in the last five years, so that by the year 2022, the number could reach 133,000.”

Where do the nuns come in? The nuns, members of a religious group founded by St. Francis and St. Clare, are the female counterpart of the Franciscan friars. It is traditionally held that both St. Francis and St. Clare were devoted to the care of lepers. This tradition and concern for the most abandoned members of society became part of the Franciscan/Poor Clare ministry in the Church. In fact, the first leprosarium in the Philippines, and in Asia for that matter, was founded by Franciscan fray Juan Clemente in 1578. Initially called Hospital de los Naturales, it eventually evolved into San Lazaro Hospital in Quiricada Street, Sta. Cruz, Manila. (Clemente also founded what is now the San Juan de Dios Hospital, as shown in the plaque and bronze image of him in the main entrance of the hospital.)

Fast forward to 2016. It can perhaps be claimed that with her advocacy for persons with HIV/AIDS, Wurtzbach is a Franciscan/Poor Clare at heart, and the whole Franciscan family in the Philippines—priests, brothers (OFM, Capuchins, conventuals, TOR or third officer regulars), sisters (contemplative and active), lay and clergy members of the secular order—may be one with her in praying for the success of her advocacy. San Lazaro Hospital continues to minister to those with infectious diseases, including those with HIV/AIDS, where they receive the best care and medical attention from the Department of Health and spiritual support from the Archdiocese of Manila, represented by the present chaplain Fr. Hector Ulysses Canion.

As the late Princess Diana of the United Kingdom embraced a person with HIV/AIDS to show that mere physical contact does not transmit the disease, Wurtzbach can send a most powerful message by actually visiting persons with HIV/AIDS who are confined at San Lazaro Hospital, as a very concrete gesture of support.

—ANTONIO MARIA ROSALES, thinktonymaros@gmail.com