Faithful peace
Sr Emma Delgado; Interact, Summer ‘08; 1/7/08, a Dominican nun from Mindanao, reflects on the journey that took her to work for Peace Advocates for Zamboanga (PAZ) This is an edited extract from a ‘Sharing stories’ session at Progressio’s regional workshop on women, faith and peace, Timor Leste, 21-24 February 2006. It is taken from “Faithful peace, peaceful faith; The role of women of faith in building peace”, by Jane McGrory
I come from Basilan in the southern Philippines. Paz is 12 years old and its mission is inter-religious dialogue: we work with Muslims and Protestants, reach out to indigenous people, and dream of reaching out to the Buddhist community. We celebrate the Mindanao week of peace, supported by the government. Every year more religious communities and community groups get involved, from all over the Philippines and beyond. My own personal story is of inter-religious dialogue in life. I grew up in a Muslim community: we played, ate and lived together without concern for religious differences. Life was beautiful. But in the 1970s the situation became very confused and the military took control. There was violence everywhere, widespread rights violations, and war. The conflict was between military forces and Moro rebel groups, and the victims were both Muslims and Christians.
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Members of my family died as a result of the conflict and the tensions. Different communities and faiths became suspicious of each other, and hatred developed. This has been going on for 30 years now and the culture of violence is everywhere. In our own convent, a rebel group, Abu Sayyaf, nearly took us all hostage.
I became so mad with all the madness. Our family left Basilan as it was a day-to-day struggle to live amid violence and hatred. It was very hard not to mistrust other groups and faiths. At that time it was unthinkable for me that one day I would work with Muslim communities: I was against inter-religious dialogue.
I would look at how Fr Angel Calvo, the PAZ Director, was working to build dialogue between faiths, and think that he could only do this as he was an outsider and did not understand our suffering.
I became a postulant and did my training. I went to Darwin and worked on a programme for reconciliation between Aboriginal and white Australians. But I realised that I wasn’t being honest because there was a gap in my own understanding of how communities live together, forgive and understand each other.
I returned to the Philippines and started working on myself to reconcile my hatred and suspicion.
The turning point for me was when I saw a TV report about the kidnapping of a Catholic priest. The kidnapper had been my childhood friend and his family had been killed. When I saw his face I remembered how his family had been killed, and realised that we are all victims of the violence. I went to volunteer in a Dominican school where 60 per cent of the students are Muslim. There was a change within me as a result of this experience. The school did not previously allow students to wear head scarves, but we did.
We celebrated Ramadan and campaigned for other schools with Muslim students to do the same. I started to reach out to returnees who had belonged to rebel groups. Now I see them as models of peace and admire them, which I could not do before. And last year, when I was invited to work with PAZ, I felt ready. I never stop dreaming that Mindanao will be one.
Tags: Dominican, The Philippines, Timor