By Michael Boctot
These street kids are longing for the same kind of love 
that I experienced with my mother. They want to be loved even in simple ways like giving time in talking to them. They ask for the value of respect as they too are...
Misyon Online - September-October 2010
THE COVER STORY PHOTO
The photo was about the seven young Columban’s mini pilgrimage in Paete, Laguna. We picked this place because it is very significant for us. It has a link to us. We have a Columban martyr Fr. Francis Douglas, SSC who died in the hands of the Japanese during WWII. The young Columbans walked from Pililla Rizal where Fr. Douglas was the pastor before the Japanese brought him to Paete where he was tortured and died. It was a good two days walk. We visited different churches along the way and, when we arrived in Paete, we had a chance of meeting two eye witnesses who gave us an account of what really happened to the captured priest. The martyrdom of Fr. Douglas is a living example for us. We can be martyrs not because we want it but because it was the most fitting and loving response at that particular moment. After that pilgrimage, we set off for a month-long pilgrimage in Europe starting in Ireland and ending in Italy, following the footsteps of St. Columban, the patron saint of our congregation. We were joined by 33 more young Columbans who are working in 14 different countries.
A Woman for Her Time
By Stan and Moya Mac Eoin
The authors, husband and wife, are retired teachers who live in Kinvara, County Galway, Ireland, on the southern side of the famed Galway Bay. Stan has been a lifelong friend of your editor since they because classmates in O’Connell Schools, Dublin, in Grade Three. One of the schools in Dublin that sends students to help in Kolkata, Stanhope Street, is where your editor spent four years in the Boys’ Kindergarten.
Dealing Positively With Life Despite Uncertainties
by Ric Vincent M. Dumaog
Introduction by Fr Oliver McCrossan
By any standards, Ric Dumaog is an extraordinary young man. He was stricken with polio when only nine months old leaving him paralyzed in both legs. Despite his disability, he graduated with a degree in accountancy. Married with three young children, Ric is a founding member and president of STAND, an organization actively campaigning for persons with disabilities in Ozamiz City. Being very determined, he took up law studies and is now in his final year. He writes below about his life.
I was trying to look back at my past . . . I come from a very poor family. My father was a carpenter-painter-tricycle driver rolled into one. He tried to work in all kinds of jobs, even went fishing, just to help us survive. No one could ever have imagined how I would graduate from college and how we would survive. If not for my determination to finish college, I know I would be a beggar.
Poverty
By Andy Gregorio
I have experienced deep poverty in relationship. Due to poverty and my great desire to become a professional, I was separated from my parents at the age of six. My father was a simple fisherman and my mother a housewife taking care of us their eight children. Life was so difficult for us, trying to make both ends meet daily. Even more difficult was our schooling. With this situation I decided to go with my uncle who offered to help me in my schooling in faraway Palawan.
TANVIR
By Gloria Canama
Gloria Canama, from Tangub City, Misamis Occidental, has been a Columban lay missionary in Pakistan lay missionary in Pakistan for almost 20 years. Fr Thomas O’Hanlon, known to his family as ‘Tommy’, was given the name ‘Tanvir’, ‘Enlightened One’, shortly after his arrival in Pakistan in 1982 by an old man. He died unexpectedly in Lahore on 5 June.
‘His first love . . . and his real love’
By Rowena D. Cuanico
Fr Patrick McCaffrey was born in County Fermanagh,
Northern Ireland in 1944 and ordained in St Eugene’s Cathedral,
Derry, on 20 December 1967. He went to Fiji in 1968 and moved to
Pakistan when the Columbans opened a mission there in 1979. In 2000
he was transferred to Britain where he worked mainly with Muslims,
some of them refugees from the Middle East, in Bradford. He also
celebrated Mass regularly there with Pakistani Catholics. He moved
back to Fiji and later was again assigned to Pakistan, where he died
suddenly on 18 May this year.
Rowena Cuanico, from Samar, is a Columban Lay Missionary who worked in Fiji before taking up her present assignment as Coordinator of Columban Lay Missionaries in the Philippines.