Pulong ng Editor

Though I’ve been in the Philippines for more than 37 years, longer than most Filipinos, I am not a Filipino nor can I ever be, even if I acquire citizenship. Filipinos whom I knew as children in Mindanao are now citizens of Ireland, my native country. Indeed, they have more rights there than I have. Though I’ve been a permanent resident here for 32 years I cannot vote, whereas my former parishioners in Ireland with the same status can vote and run for office in the local elections we hold every five years. Those who are citizens and living there can vote in all elections and even run for President, whereas I can’t.

But my Filipino friends who are Irish citizens can never be Irish in the sense that I am. Nor can I, even if I live here till I’m 100, be a Filipino in the sense that they are.

A comparison I often make is that I am an ‘apple’ whereas Filipinos, at home or overseas, are ‘mangoes’. Mangoes and apples can be eaten in the Philippines and in Ireland. But if I planted an apple seed here in Bacolod it would die because of the heat and if my Filipino friends in Ireland planted a mango seed there it would die because of the cold.

Fr Pat O’Shea’s article Where do I Belong? is all about this. As a missionary in the Philippines I feel very much at home here and have a strong sense of belonging – most of the time. But there are moments when I’m acutely aware that I’m still an ‘apple’ and not a ‘mango’.  And when I go home to Ireland it’s not the place I first left as a priest in 1968. There has been an enormous cultural change there, recognized by everyone. The widespread poverty that was still there 40 years ago has been largely eradicated. But there has been a colossal falling away from the Catholic faith, something that distresses me.

Until less than ten years ago almost everyone in Ireland was an ‘apple’. Now, one in ten is a ‘mango’ or other exotic ‘fruit’. The new Ireland is more like a ‘fruit cocktail’.

Many among the millions of Filipinos working overseas and the many thousands of Filipino missionaries who have left these islands to preach the gospel elsewhere surely ask themselves from time to time, as Father O’Shea does, ‘Which one is home?’ Perhaps for the overseas worker, as distinct from the migrant, the question doesn’t arise since the longing is always there for family and home in the Philippines.  But the migrant parents with children born in another country face the reality that home for their children is the country of their birth and upbringing, not the Philippines.

Missionaries often feel that they have two homes, their native country and their adopted country. But there are times they feel they belong to neither. And St Columban reminds us, ‘Since we are travelers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home’.

But I know for sure that the missionaries who have that saint as their patron make their own the prayer of Fr Noel Connolly in this issue for 90 years of the Missionary Society of St Columban:  Lord, we thank you for 90 years / Of crossing boundaries of country, / Culture and class to preach the Gospel / And for all the blessings our work / Has brought us.