What more can we say to you but “thank you”?
On your fifty-fourth year, no words can ever capture how your selfless work changed so many lives and bore men and women of faith to walk paths less travelled — without fear or question. Because you led by example that there is nothing to fear for as long as we side with the poorest of the poor and struggle with them until genuine social change is achieved.
Thank you for being a building block in the establishment of the community-based health programs (CBHP) 50 years ago. Through your daughters: Sr. Mary Grenough, MM, Sr. Eva Varon, MMS and Sr. Xavier Marie Bual, SPC who were members of RMP, the concept of CBHP was started in 3 pilot programs in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao in 1973. Today, those 3 seeds have grown to 75 CBHPs all over the country and still growing.
Through the years, the relevance of the vision of CBHP that you have started remains, “where poverty, powerlessness, and all forms of oppression are eliminated; where basic rights are fully guaranteed and the basic needs are sufficiently provided; where all citizens have the opportunity and power to develop potentials and creativity through democratic and participatory processes of social institutions. CBHPs envision a health care system that is nationalist, relevant, accessible, and responsive to the needs of the people.”
And because of the fruits of your toil, you are constantly attacked. But as you have done so in more than fifty years, you stood tall with unwaivering faith. Holding strongly to the belief that there is no peace without justice. As a Gospel’s witness, you are an embodiment of “protecting and promoting the dignity and good of all”.
Let us thank you by carrying on with our own mission and sowing the seeds you have sown farther, wider, and deeper.
We can never be more proud to raise our fists and win the struggle alongside you for a healthier society in a just and humane world.
Council for Health and Development (CHD) 