Normita Lopez wept in one corner of the church, in the shadow of a confessional, as she looked up at sign posted above the crucified Christ on the altar.
“Stop the killings,” read the rough cardboard sign that replaced the traditional “INRI” or “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews).’
Lopez was looking at the crucified Christ but kept on mumbling over and over “Mama Mary, Mama Mary.” Maybe dozen times, she later told LICAS News in an interview.
“I had so many things to tell her, but I knew she would understand that I only needed to call her name,” said Lopez.
Two years later, she continues to search for justice for her slain son, Djastin, even as she now believes that her prayers have already been answered.
In April this year, the Office of the Ombudsman approved the filing of murder charges and dismissal from service against a police officer accused of executing Djastic on May 18, 2017.
It’s hardly a complete victory. In the slow-moving justice of the Philippines, a decade could pass before a conviction can be had.
Lopez, one of the more than a dozen women who have filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court against President Rodrigo Duterte, said the important thing is to “not just leave your hopes to heaven.”
Marian devotion
At the National Shrine of the Mother of Perpetual Help in Manila, the Wednesday hum of prayers and appeals from thousands of Filipinos mix into a canticle of despair and hope.
The shrine in the capital’s Baclaran district attracts more than 150,000 Catholics weekly. Young and old cross the long nave on their knees to seek the intercession of Mary.
The devotion to the Our Mother of Perpetual Help is one of the most popular in Asia’s majority Catholic country where popes have conferred pontifical coronation to at least 42 Marian images.
The intense devotion to this Marian icon prompted the Vatican in 1958 to authorize 24/7 access to the image. The Wednesday prayers are also held across the country in many churches.
Many devotees see Mary as an intercessor, like in the Cana wedding feast, where she asked her son to step in and solve the hosts’ wine problems.
But Lopez and Benedictine nun Mary John Mananzan see Mary as a guide for life.
“Mama Mary walked with Jesus and suffered with him,” said Lopez. “She stayed with him till the end. She will not abandon us. Neither will I abandon Djastin,” added the woman.
Since police shot dead Djastin, Lopez has filled three notebooks with poetry that recall her son’s dreams and the ups and downs of seeking justice.
Some scribbles address Mother Mary. Lopez doesn’t always beg. “She already knows, and she doesn’t forget,” wrote the mother of nine. “I just tell her what’s happening, the good and the bad.”
Revolutionary
In the Philippines, sermons and lectures often highlight Mary as handmaiden, a docile, long-suffering woman blessed for her obedience to God’s dictates.
Her Immaculate Conception has somehow morphed from recognition of her blessed state from birth to that of placing a premium on virginity and chastity.
Sister Mary John said she has been working hard to correct the worn out belief.
Mary’s canticle, the Magnifcat, “is actually a very revolutionary song,” said the 82- year-old Benedictine nun. “It says, God shall put down the mighty from their seat and exalt the humble.”
“It is also very much pro-poor,” she added. “God shall fill the hungry with good things and shall send the rich away empty.”
“I believe that is what activists like me are trying to bring about: the end to tyranny and the end to poverty,” she said.
Sister Mary John was only 19 when she entered the Benedictine convent, two months after her college graduation.
She was completing her linguistics analysis doctorate in Germany when the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law.
She came home and received her baptism of fire at the picket line of striking distillery workers.
“I witnessed for the first time military brutality,” she recalled. “The workers with whom we linked arms were beaten up, pushed into military buses, and brought to detention camps.”
The nun never looked back. Last year, she spoke at a workers’ picket outside one of the country’s biggest food conglomerates.
She also helped organize and fund alternative indigenous schools now under government fire.
Informed choice
Sister Mary John said grace has never been a substitute for agency or freedom of choice.
Mary knew the enormity of the struggle ahead, she added. She wasn’t just a vessel. She was a witness, an example by virtue of her words and actions.
The docility surrounding Mary’s reputation is a colonial construct, the Benedictine nun said. Before the Spaniards arrived, the indigenous women of the country enjoyed equal status with males.
“Our foreparents, not having a concept of virginity, treated their sons and daughters in the same way, not overprotecting the girls,” said the nun.
“She had the same freedom of movement, same rights, and was involved in the socio-political, economic and cultural activities of society,” she added.
The Spanish missionaries were shocked. They imposed standards for women in the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century.
“Although they succeeded in domesticating the ‘mujer indigena,’ she retained the dangerous, subversive memory of her equality,” the nun said.
She cited today’s powerful indigenous women battling to protect ancestral lands against big corporations and their allies in the government, urban activists campaigning to stop the killings, and anti-corruption advocates.
Father Wilfredo Dulay, convener of the Religious Discernment Group, said Duterte fears women for good reason.
“Their compassion runs deep and makes them more steadfast fighters for justice and fearless advocates for the right to life and for human dignity,” he pointed out.
Dulay cited the deported Sister Patricia Fox as an example of strength and grace.
Sister Fox’s personal mission statement drew directly from Jesus, as told by the evangelist Luke: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and new sight to the blind; to free the oppressed and to announce the Lord’s year of mercy.”
“That’s how all Christians should behave, but sometimes I think women just do it better,” said the priest.
