The Xaverian Missionaries in the Philippines

Catholic and Muslim Cooperation in Mission with the Poor

The Xaverian Missionaries began in the Philippines in 1991. The motivation came from a General Chapter decision to open a regional theology program in Asia.

The Xaverian Missionaries opened St. Francis Xavier Parish in 1992. That same year they accepted the first group of theology students from Italy and Mexico to begin the first Regional Theology of Asia.

The Diocese of Manila was divided up into five new dioceses. We ended up in two of these new dioceses; The Diocese of Cubao and the Diocese of Novaliches.

Here Fr. Carl Chudy and Fr. Marco Milia poses at Confirmation time with our new Bishop Antonio Tobias.

St. Francis Xavier Parochial School began as a two room day care center in 1992, and is now a pre-school, elementary and newly approved high school with over 750 students.

The International Theology Program grew from a small group to about 15 students over the years. They studied at Maryhill School of Theology from 1992-2005. They were transferred to Loyola School of Theology and are presently preparing themselves there.

Our students come from nine different nations.

In 2003 we established the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Desk with Fr. Archie Casey as its coordinator.

Fr. Casey began as a staff person in the office of justice for the Major Superiors of Men in the Philippines.

One of the main areas we focused on was AGRARIAN REFORM. Specifically, this means assisting organizations of poor farmers in their long goal to attain tracts of land promised to them by federal law more than twenty years ago.

Systematic pattern of violence, harassment and intimidation has been carried out by landowners against peasant leaders and their members, hoping that by doing these acts, farmer organizations would cease asserting their land claims under the law. The data further reveals that there are a totalof 2,342 persons who are victims of killings, frustrated killings, harassment (either through grave threats, frustrated abduction, unlawful filing of criminal cases against peasants resulting to arrests and detention, disappearance) andviolent dispersals.

Over the past six years, there have been many extrajudicial executions of leftist activists in the Philippines. These killings have eliminated civil society leaders, including human rights defenders, trade unionists and land reform advocates, intimidated a vast number of civil society actors, and narrowed the country’s political discourse. Depending on who is counting and how, the total number of such executions ranges from 100 to over 800. Counter-insurgency strategy and recent changes in the priorities of the criminal justice system are of special importance to understanding why the killings continue. (UN Report on the Killings)

First, big landowners and their employees are running amokof Philippine law and international law, and with complete impunity, are engaged in a wide range ofcriminal activity that seriously undermines rural poor people’s effective access to their human rights.

Second, in this light, the Philippine state is failing abjectly to fulfill its obligations to respect, protectand fulfill the human rights of the rural poor population, as signatory to the various relevant international human rights law conventions.

•Human suffering and injustice•Mandate of our faiths•Search for justice and reconciliation