Manila mourns Sister Eva, a nun and surgeon dedicated to serving the poor

The nun, winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, passed away on 14 April at the age of 85. In 1986, she founded the Mission of Our Lady of Peace and established free health clinics, which have treated tens of thousands of people in need free of charge. Her compassion is celebrated as one of the pillars upon which to ‘build the nation’.

Manila (AsiaNews) - The Catholic Church and the Philippines mourn the passing of Sister Eva Fidela Maamo, a nun and surgeon, winner of the 1997 Ramon Magsaysay Award (the Asian Nobel Prize), who devoted her life to serving the poor and died on 14 April at the age of 85.

A tireless missionary, attentive to the most vulnerable and marginalised sections of the population, she was widely known in the country, not only within the Church community.

Recalling the award and the nun’s work, the organisers of the Magsaysay Award emphasised in a statement that “the nation mourns her passing, recognising her life dedicated to the service of the poor”.

According to the Foundation behind the prestigious award, one of the most important on the continent, the nun was an “extraordinary example in bringing humanitarian aid and medical care to the poorest Filipinos”.

“She founded the Mission of Our Lady of Peace Foundation in 1986. She established free health clinics in ten squatter communities, fed malnourished children, provided shelter for street youths and abused women, and launched livelihood programmes that restored dignity to the most vulnerable. Her medical and surgical missions – the Ramon Magsaysay statement continues – brought volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists to remote communities across the country. They treated tens of thousands of people free of charge”.

Sister Eva, a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Paul de Chartres, volunteered in 1974 to help establish a medical mission on the shores of Lake Sebu in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.

This aid initiative was aimed at indigenous groups such as the T’boli, the Manobo and other mountain peoples in the surrounding areas. Despite the shortage of many medical supplies in rural areas, the nun performed veritable miracles of improvisation, operating by the light of a torch and substituting coconut water for dextrose.

From the 1980s onwards, the nun ran free clinics in ten shanty towns in Manila, provided daily nutritious meals to malnourished children and founded a charitable hospital for the poor in Manila. Through the Mission of Our Lady of Peace, which she founded in 1986, she helped communities in need throughout the capital.

Furthermore, Sister Eva launched livelihood and microcredit programmes to help destitute adults transition from begging to work. In her mission’s shelters, street children and abused women find a place of refuge and a safe haven. Thanks to the scholarship programme, hundreds of poor young people have been able to attend school.

The nun had an indomitable spirit; she led by example rather than by word and inspired her volunteers to endure long and gruelling missions in rural areas. Those who worked with her were able to carry out exhausting surgical procedures simply because, as they confessed, “Sister Eva kept going”.

“Through a life entirely dedicated to ‘the least of her brothers’, she demonstrated – the statement concludes – that compassion, when put into concrete and courageous action, is itself a form of nation-building”.

Sister Eva was born on 17 September 1940 in Liloan, in the province of Southern Leyte. She studied at the Velez College of Medicine in Cebu, in central Philippines, and practised medicine at the family clinic in Liloan.

When a series of earthquakes and floods struck in the early 1990s, the nun led medical teams into the devastated regions. In the aftermath of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Zambales mountains on Luzon in the Philippines, she launched a comprehensive resettlement project to help hundreds of displaced Aeta, a resourceful people, by providing them with the means to start a new life.

Furthermore, four times a year she led week-long medical missions to remote locations across the archipelago. Over the years, 40,000 destitute patients were treated by her volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists.

On similar missions, she and other Filipino surgeons removed tumours, repaired cleft palates, performed cataract operations and treated a myriad of other ailments in thousands of free procedures, working from dawn to dusk in makeshift operating theatres.

Inspired by Jesus’ teaching to care for “the least of my brothers”, the nun devoted herself to the needs of the poor, fully embodying the value of Christian mercy. So much so that she used to say that, for her, “working with the poor was a joy”.