Medical and apostolic mission Rosa Mystica in the Philippines

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After two years of forced stop, the volunteers of the Rosa Mystica Mission will finally be able to return to the Philippines from September 11 to 18, 2022.
Here is the program for the next mission, sent by our permanent “apostolic nurse” in the Philippines, Yolly Gamutan. This Mission may take place as planned, God willing, and… the Filipinos too! They have very great capacities for immediate adaptation to the many unforeseen events that punctuate their everyday lives, but the other side of the coin is also their difficulty in planning projects well in advance and sticking to them!

The many natural disasters that continually befall the country explain this character trait of the Filipino people, which is also part of their charm! Even if it is sometimes difficult to live for us, Europeans, who claim to want to control everything from epidemics to climate! We will therefore give you a detailed account of this mission in our next issue of Cahiers Saint Raphaël in January 2023, with all its probable twists!

Doctors, surgeons, nurses, nursing assistants, opticians, pharmacists, etc., from all over the world, will go to the poorest of the poor in three different places located in the north of the island of Mindanao, the southernmost large island. of the Philippine archipelago.

The first two days will take place in Butuan, in the district of Santa Lucia, where the 2020 mission should have been held, which had turned into a traveling mission in the surrounding mountains because of the Covid.

The Society of Saint Pius X has opened a mission there since 1998, in an extremely poor neighborhood where homeless families who have lost everything during typhoons, floods or other natural disasters are rehoused. But this district is itself liable to flooding (see photo), because the nearby river constantly overflows its bed and the district is located below its usual water level. A small chapel was donated a few years ago by a poor faithful who had a deep desire to convert the population of the village. This chapel, like the whole district, experiences “minor” flooding (50 cm of water on average) at least twenty times a year and major flooding (more than one meter of water) at least three times a year.
The apostolate in this very poor community where superstitions reigned, drunkenness, gambling, prostitution etc. was very difficult. But the grace of God works wonders and the patient and persevering work of priests for more than twenty years is beginning to bear fruit in the second generation, which is more willing to turn to prayer and the sacraments.

On July 16, 2022, His Excellency Monsignor de Galarreta came to confirm about thirty faithful. Some of them are involved in the apostolate (visiting the sick, catechism in the Mamanwa tribe, which the mission will also visit) and in the social life of the village (organization of the medical mission, distribution of first-rate foodstuffs necessity given by the government, assumption of responsibility in the direction of the barangay (district) etc…)

Many residents of Santa Lucia lost their jobs during the lockdown. Yolly Gamutan, our missionary nurse with the local ACIM-Asia team came to help the sick during these two years of confinement (very strict in the Philippines). She was able to come to their aid thanks to the donations of all the Filipino and foreign benefactors. The inhabitants of the neighborhood await the Mission Rosa Mystica as a blessing.

The next two days we will go a little further north of the island, to the Mamanwas of Cantugas, an aboriginal tribe with whom Father Timothy Pfeiffer opened an apostolic mission since 2020 and with whom Yolly Gamutan has worked for two years as a nurse. and catechist. We have already told how Providence had favored this meeting between “Father Tim” (Cahier Saint Raphaël n° 145) and this poor tribe whose customs and mores project us into the Neolithic era and who, in the name of “cultural preservation” ordained by the government is fossilized in ignorance and spiritual darkness. Unfortunately the tribal chief and his wife are torn, Yolly tells us, “between accepting our teachings and obeying the government order that they must ‘preserve their tribal identity and culture’ by resisting Catholicism. (the “ideological colonization” and the “cultural genocide” recently denounced by Pope Francis!) which would nevertheless allow the rejection of superstitions and primitive beliefs based on a false understanding of the world around them. The spiritual warfare for their souls is real. We put our hope in our Heavenly Mother because some members of the tribe like to pray the rosary. Thanks to God, the chief of the tribe and his wife keep their promise made to Father Tim to join in the Sunday rosary…”.

A chapel construction project is in progress, delayed by the difficulty posed by the establishment of title deeds in these tribes who were still nomadic not so long ago. The search for the dates and places of birth of the owners of the land is a real headache…
In terms of health and hygiene, Yolly tries to teach them some basic rules in order to preserve them from recurring illnesses due to unsanitary conditions, water contamination, etc. Yolly is counting on the visit of foreign doctors and nurses from Rosa Mystica to encourage them to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

Third objective of our mission: Canlanipa, a very poor district of Surigao City, where a community of settlers has gathered on a communal land in a more or less legal way. Residents of this neighborhood are very low-income workers from the city’s seaport.

Many of them lost their homes and the few possessions they had during Typhoon Odette in December 2021. Thanks to donations collected and distributed by Acim-Asia, they were able to receive aid to rebuild their damaged homes. Father Tim has developed a new mission there and many children, sponsored and supported spiritually and materially by the students of the Dominicans of Fanjeaux during Lent 2022, were able to make their first communion last May.

The Caraga region where Butuan and Surigao are located is a particularly poor region and health services are very limited there. Medical care, which is very expensive, is not accessible to the population of poor neighborhoods. Our small team of doctors and nurses will be able, as much as possible, to bring them a little relief, a small drop of water in an ocean of misery.

The Rosa Mystica Mission needs your help and your generosity! Remember that it was founded in 2004 by Doctor Jean-Pierre Dickès and Father Daniel Couture. Except in 2021, due to border closures, it has taken place every year since 2007.

She lives only thanks to the donations of her friends and benefactors!

The volunteers (six doctors, paramedical volunteers and non-caregivers; about thirty in total) are volunteers and finance their plane tickets themselves. The donations are therefore only assigned to the material organization of the Mission itself, to the purchase of medicines and the necessary medical equipment, sometimes to the financing of hospitalizations and more important surgical interventions than those that the we can offer to the mission, etc…

You can send your donations:
to Bernadette Dickès, 2 route d’Equihen, 62360 Saint-Etienne-au-Mont

Checks should be made payable to ACIM
Or by paypal on the site:

Tax receipt on request.

Mail address : [email protected]
In Switzerland you can connect to the site

The AMEP association is authorized to issue tax receipts for Switzerland.