Cassandra Martyrs of Charity

The martyrs and the M/V Cassandra

Shepherding has taken many forms in the history of the Catholic Church. In the Philippines, on November 21, 1983, it was shepherding in a shipwreck. The RGS Sisters and some other religious and priests were on board the M/V Doña Cassandra when it sank in shark-infested waters off the coast of Northeastern Mindanao, Philippines. Survivors told of the Sisters and Priests praying, distributing life vests, helping children put theirs on, instructing other passengers to hasten towards the life rafts and to be ready to abandon ship, not calculating how little time they had to save themselves – until time did run out. Due to their heroic sacrifice, theologians and canonists (as well as postulators of beatification causes) accepted them to be enlisted within the category as "Martyrs of Charity", who readily risked and lost their lives during profoundly dangerous circumstances, in imitation of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep. (Jn. 10:11)

Mary Consuelo Chuidian

Remedios Chuidian, (b. May 4, 1937 in Manila, Philippines) later known as Sister Mary Consuelo or Sister Elo, was born into a life of privilege. She had her fill of parties and pampering, and she was able to study for a master's degree abroad. Many were surprised when in 1961 she chose the life of a nun, joining the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS).

She surprised many again by volunteering to be assigned to Mindanao. Martial law had been imposed; the Roman Catholic church was actively promoting its social teachings. With these new developments, Chuidian’s lifestyle, priorities, and even the target of her apostolate, were also changing.

As she embraced a life of poverty and sacrifice among the oppressed and marginalized people in Mindanao’s rural areas, the woman with a conservative upbringing turned into an “ibong pumipiglas” – a bird struggling to be free, celebrated in the song “Bayan Ko.” She began attending protest rallies. She started giving awareness seminars. She opened her school facilities to be used for meetings and forums by tribal groups, labor groups, and others who could not afford to rent expensive venues.

Her first assignment as a missionary sister was in Maragusan, Davao del Norte, where upland farmers grew coffee and cacao, and life was very hard. People depended on rain for water. They had no electricity. Landslides hit frequently.

Among the Mansaka, an indigenous community, the nuns started a program to train lay apostolates, “kaabag,” who went out to the villages to hold prayer services and give communion in the absence of a priest. The sisters also trained catechists and organized a social action center. Sister Elo learned to wear bakya or wooden clogs, and to bathe in the creek, like everybody else.

She learned to take these difficulties in stride, in the same way that she remained unfazed by the mistrust shown towards them by government troopers and New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas both operating in the same area. “You don’t have to shout,” she once told an angry soldier, in a cool tone that distinguished her as a lady from a refined background.

Her next post was in Laac, Davao del Norte, where the people had been forced to relocate from their original communities and regroup in so-called hamlets, so as to remove them from the influence of anti-government guerrilla units. (This was a counterinsurgency tactic used in the Vietnam war.)

The people could not return to their farms, so there was little food and much discontent. The hamlets, under the strict control of the military, had no running water, no toilets, and no bathrooms. Epidemics broke out, and children were getting sick and dying. One Christmas Eve, Sister Elo and another nun had to bring a sick person down a bad road from the hamlet to a hospital in town. The nuns ate the same food as the other people, mostly camote, corn and bagoong. Sister Elo lost a lot of weight. Her letters to her family, however, spoke not of her own difficulties but of military atrocities, corpses, torture, weeping widows, starving children, droughts and floods.

In 1982, Chuidian moved to Davao City when she was appointed superior of the RGS community there. She was also elected chair of the Women’s Alliance for True Change and coordinator of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines for South Mindanao. She became a leading figure in the Sisters’ Association in Mindanao and the Association of Religious Women of Davao.

These new responsibilities allowed her to help more people suffering from martial law, victims of ambushes needing medical attention, families forced to live in hamlets, activists on the government’s wanted list seeking refuge, rape survivors, and even wounded guerrillas.

Sister Mary Consuelo Chuidian, nicknamed “Rubia” as a child because of her naturally light-colored hair, transformed into the much-loved, ever helpful Sister Elo who lived to serve the poor. She was much admired for her sincere spirit of self-sacrifice. She was one of those who died in 1983 when their ship, the MV Cassandra, sank on their way to a meeting in Cebu. Survivors said the nuns were among those who took care of the children and helped organize the distribution of life vests, not taking any for themselves.

Mary Virginia Gonzaga

Virginia Gonzaga (b. June 9, 1941 in Bacolod, Negros Occidental, Philippines) was a woman with compassion, responsibility and a sense of mission.

Orphaned early, she had to be responsible for her brothers and sister. She graduated from college with a degree in commerce (1967) and then became an organizer for the Young Christian Workers in her birthplace of Negros Occidental. This was before she entered the religious life as a novice of the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS), where she took her final vows in 1979.

Among Gonzaga’s assignments were with slum dwellers in Cebu and then with migrant workers in Agusan. The social and economic realities that revealed themselves to her made her critical of development plans that sacrificed the well- being of poor people. In response, the sisters gave seminars that made the people aware of their rights and the various means they could use to address their problems. Local community leaders were identified and given training so that they themselves could teach and organize the others.

But “Sister Gin” contracted malaria and typhoid in Agusan; when she had recovered, she was sent back to Mindanao – as superior of the small RGS community in Sapad, Lanao del Norte, where there was some tension between Muslims and Christians.

Muslims made up almost half of the students in the diocesan school where Gonzaga taught. The school made it a point not to force or encourage them to join Catholic services, but instead tried to merely be accepted in their “apostolate of presence.” After school hours the sisters would visit the students in their homes.

Mary Virginia Gonzaga died in 1983 when an overloaded, dilapidated interisland vessel, the MV Cassandra, sank in the sea four hours after leaving Nasipit, Agusan del Norte bound for Cebu. She and three other RGS sisters were among the more than 600 passengers of the boat, of whom only 184 survived.

Other justice and peace workers who also perished in that tragedy included Inocencio Ipong of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), Sr. Amparo Gilbuena, MSM; Sena Canabria and Evelyn Hong of Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP), Sr. Josephine Medrano, FMA; Rev. Ben Bunio, United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP); and Fr. Simon Westendorp, O.Carm. They did all they could to help others put on their life vests and evacuate the sinking ship.

Mary Catherine Loreto

Lucinda Loreto (b. April 30, 1944 in Pasig, Manila, Philippines) was the child of an army dentist who died missing in action during World War II. His widow raised her two daughters by herself.

Loreto earned two university diplomas, in foreign service and business administration. She worked in a bank, went to parties and wore miniskirts like other young women at the time, the 1960s. Her family was surprised when she decided to become a nun (a Religious of the Good Shepherd, RGS) in 1973. The country was under martial law.

Working in a poor community in Manila brought her face to face with the suffering caused by poverty. Sometimes she would join residents of the slums protesting against the forcible demolition of their homes, like them going through the experience of being hosed down by water cannons.

She was then assigned to Isabela and Cebu, but it was in Bicol where she was exposed to the abuses perpetrated by the military under the dictatorship. She became a defender of human rights.

She joined the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, a group of sisters from different religious orders who undertook development programs in poor rural communities.

In Davao, Loreto volunteered for the field office of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) and was soon its coordinator.

Resistance to the Marcos dictatorship was growing in Davao City and adjacent areas. Communities supported legal as well as extra-legal protest actions, and even the New People’s Army and its urban-based Sparrow Units.

Human rights violations continued unabated. TFDP-Davao received countless requests for lawyers, assistance in locating missing persons and so on. Loreto, as the task force coordinator, carried a heavy burden. But she was aware that her status as a religious afforded her some measure of protection. She went about her tasks with great dedication and courage.

She visited detainees in the camps, sought out military officials in searching for missing persons, traveled to remote areas to inform the families of those who had been detained or killed. She escorted relatives to funeral parlors and morgues to identify bodies. Once she secured the baby of an activist couple and temporarily brought it to the convent to be cared for. Resourceful and friendly, she even developed a network of informants – drivers and funeral parlors owners, among others, for locating missing persons. Detainees were particularly thankful for her efforts in organizing visits by friends and in soliciting material assistance for their needs.

On a boat trip to Cebu in 1983, Sr. Catherine Loreto drowned with three other RGS nuns during the sinking of the MV Cassandra. Survivors said it was the nuns who alerted the passengers that the ship was sinking, because the crew refused to admit it. The sisters roused sleeping passengers, gave instructions on survival measures and made sure that the children especially had life vests. The sisters themselves did not take life jackets. Out of more than 600 passengers, less than 200 survived the disaster.

Mary Concepcion Conti

Lourdes Conti (b. February 5, 1937 in Bauan, Batangas, Philippines) was born in Batangas and studied there at the St. Bridget’s School, run by the Religious of the Good Shepherd (RGS). In 1973 she joined the Good Shepherd sisters herself, taking the name Sister Mary Concepcion by which she was to become well known and respected as a teacher, missionary and development worker.

“Sister Cons” was one of three nuns sent to Agusan in Mindanao in 1978 to start an RGS community in Agusan. The sisters settled in a town along the river, living with a local family because they did not have their own convent. The place was remote, food was scarce, and transportation difficult. To move around, the women hitched rides on logging trucks, tractors, bulldozers.

They put up a school for the children of the Banwaon Manobo who lived in the area. Logging companies had operated there for years, making the people work for low wages and leaving their natural environment in ruins.

It was Conti’s first assignment out of Luzon. She did not speak Bisaya, the common language in Mindanao, but she adjusted easily to the hard life there because “I have made a vow of poverty and I want to live a simple life.”

In 1980, when Conti was transferred to the RGS community in Davao, she organized and headed the Community-Based Health Program (CBHP) in the diocese of Tagum.

CBHP pioneered a holistic approach to health in the rural areas by helping community members to understand the sociopolitical and economic factors which contributed to their poor health and poverty. It sought to empower the local people by developing health workers from among themselves. Thus, apart from attending to health concerns needing attention, the CBHP program also raised social awareness through training and education seminars.

Because of this, CBHP staffers were regarded with suspicion by the military. Anyone caught with acupuncture needles (used in a common mode of treatment offered under the program) was likely to be detained or interrogated. The risks did not discourage Sister Cons: she continued visiting the barrios and holding seminars for barrio people.

Community health workers found her a great source of comfort. They noted her smile and her willingness to do menial tasks. Her previous teaching experience was a big help and they were able to expand the health program to most parishes in the diocese.

Sr. Mary Concepcion Conti died in 1983 with three other RGS sisters on their way to a meeting in Cebu when their ship, the MV Cassandra, sank. Survivors said the nuns were among those who helped in the evacuation of the passengers, especially the children, disregarding the need to save their own lives.

Inocencio "Boy" Tocmo Ipong

Inocencio’s (b. December 28, 1945 in Makilala, North Cotabato, Philippines) parents were Boholanons who migrated to Mindanao before the Second World War. They settled in North Cotabato, where his father engaged in planting abaca for making hemp. His mother was a school teacher at the elementary school where Inocencio studied.

“Boy,” as he was fondly called by family and friends, was the eldest of 5 children reared in a very religious Catholic home. At a young age, he entered the seminary at Noling, Cotabato City for his high school education and continued on to study Philosophy at the Regional Major Seminary in Davao City. On his third year of college, he took his regency – a period when seminarians are allowed to leave the seminary and decide on their priestly vocation – and transferred to the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, where he graduated.

Boy was in college when students were stirring up the campuses with exposes of government shenanigans and calls for democratic reforms. In Cebu, he became involved with the Khi Rho, a youth organization whose advocacy work for the peasants was close to his heart. He would join the group in trips to Carcar, Cebu, to learn about the farmers’ struggles.

Eventually, he joined the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) and became active in its organizing and advocacy work. The organization expanded and chapters were set up in the Visayas and in many places in Mindanao, including in his hometown. His father, at that time the incumbent mayor of Makilala, once saw his son speaking with authority in a gathering of farmers. While he admired Boy’s dedication to uplift the condition of the farmers, he became afraid for his son’s safety.

When martial law was declared, however, Boy refused to tow the collaborationist line that the FFF leadership espoused. Meanwhile, Vatican II and its call to serve the poor, deprived and oppressed sectors started to awaken church people. Influenced by the progressive theology of liberation, the Church’s message of social justice brought hope and courage to many. In the Philippines, amidst the despoliation and abuses of martial law, church people brought the gospel of liberation to the people of God in the chapels and rural communities.

Boy found his way to the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP), a national organization founded by the Association of Women Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AWRSP) in 1969. He worked as lay assistant, helping the nuns of the RMP craft and shape its vision of a “free, just, peaceful and egalitarian society,” among others. He travelled with the nuns all over the country and helped them organize the peasants and the lumad communities. “Know your rights!” was one of his battle cries; he believed that by raising the people’s consciousness of their human rights can they be empowered to defend themselves against the oppression and exploitation of the dictatorship and its powerful cronies.

Boy’s dedication to his work and selflessness endeared him to the RMP community. His calm persona and sense of humor often helped to alleviate the hardships and threats to personal security the RMP workers faced daily. He would play an original song (Pinagba ang Lawas) on his flute to cheer flagging spirits.

It was while working with the RMP that Boy met his wife Angie,a school teacher from Cebu. They married in simple but beautiful and meaningful rites that was a “protest” to the usual expensive weddings. Three co-worker priests officiated at the wedding held in a spartan seminar house, happily witnessed by family, close friends, RMP sisters and co-workers who brought their own food.

In 1982, while getting off a bus in Davao City, Boy was abducted and illegally detained at the Metropolitan District Command Headquarters and at Camp Catitipan in Davao City. Because he failed to report for work at the RMP office in Butuan City, friends and co-workers searched for him at the camps and hospitals, to no avail. On the 10th day since he went missing, Boy’s father, who was also looking for him, passed by the MetroDiscom Headquarters when Boy himself spotted him through a window of his jail cell. Boy called out to him, and his father immediately went in to ask to see him. The authorities at first denied Boy’s presence but relented when told that he had seen Boy through the grills. It was then that he was allowed to see Boy who looked haggard, was in a very weak state, and had bruises and contusions all over his body. Later, Boy narrated that he was tortured by his captors who wanted him to admit that he was a certain “Enciong” the military was looking for. Through the help of the RMP sisters and human rights groups, Boy was soon released.

Boy’s untiring effort to serve the poor and marginalized was tragically cut short on November 20, 1983. He was on board M/V Cassandra from Agusan, travelling with a group of 12 religious and lay people bound for Cebu to attend a seminar. A passing typhoon sent giant waves pounding against the ship and caused it to keel. After about four hours on rough waters, the boat sank, drowning over 200 passengers in the waters off Surigao, including everyone from Boy Ipong’s group. (Among those who perished were four nuns of the Religious of the Good Shepherd, all Bantayog martyrs: Srs. Mary Consuelo Chuidian, Mary Concepcion Conti, Mary Virginia Gonzaga and Mary Catherine Loreto). Survivors said they saw members of this group help many of the passengers put on their life vest. Amidst the chaos, they were last seen huddled together in prayer.

Boy’s life served as an inspiration to many people. Sr. Consuelo Valera, ICM, a co-worker, believes that his wide experience and deep grasp of the peasants’ situation ably directed the RMP’s task of social transformation. On its Silver Jubilee celebration in 1994, the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines awarded him posthumously for his untiring service and dedication to the masses.