Compassion Amidst Conflict: The Sovereign Order of Malta’s Impact in Troubled Times

In 1972, the Grand Chancellor of the Order, Bailiff Frá Quintin Jermy Gwyn, visited the country, a watershed for the Philippine Order as it was the first time that such a high-ranking officer of the Order came to visit. Among his many other activities, the Grand Chancellor signed a tri-party agreement with the Philippine Government and UNICEF, to provide medical care and to supply medicines to patients of the Culion Leper Colony in northern Palawan, to which he had paid a visit.

This charitable activity was later expanded to embrace all other Philippine Leprosaria, particularly the Central Luzon Leprosarium in Tala, Caloocan, in North Manila (now called the Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital). The Philippine Order also donated 24 hectares of land in Tala on which ex-Hansenites built their homes.

Clouding over this happy period for the Philippine Order, however, was a growing conflict over Philippine President Marcos’s having declared martial law in 1972. Cardinal Jaime Sin’s guidance helped to bridge the difficult years up to 1986.

Lolita Delgado-Fansler, the daughter of Knight Antonio C. Delgado, former Ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Philippines, and Grand Cross Pro Melitense, recalled that while her father advocated for collaboration with the Marcos regime, he would often bring her to dinner parties with foreign officials, where he would ask her to express her criticism of his rule, she wrote in her essay “Talking With Dad”:

Now I realize this was Dad’s way of getting his message across. As a representative of the Philippines, he could not say what was in his heart, except through his naïve, outspoken daughter.

Don Antonio built one of the first five-star hotels after World War II—the Manila Hilton Hotel.