Order of Malta

The Philippine Association

THE ORDER’S ESTABLISHMENT IN THE PHILIPPINES

Three years after the end of the Second World War, the Sovereign Order of Malta formally arrived, at last, on Philippine shores. Though a small number of Knights had already taken up space in Philippine history, the Order had had no official representation in the country before the Spanish Knight Don Paulino Miranda Sampedro formed “The Delegation for the Spanish Association of the Order of Malta” in 1948.

Don Paulino, Knight Magistral Grace of the Sovereign Order of Malta, was a distinguished Spanish businessman, the president and general manager of several companies, one of which was Philippine Net and Braid Company. A faithful Knight, he used his affluence for good, founding different organizations to uplift people’s lives among which were the Spanish Juvenile Organization and the Social Auxiliary. He served as vice president of the charity Hospital Español de Santiago for poor Spanish patients — still extant today.

In fulfillment of his vow to care for “Our Lords, the sick and the poor,” Don Paulino, the one-man Hospitaller, as early as the 1930s, had set up a
clinic in the name of the Order in his office at the Philippine Net and Braid which sold fishing nets, fishing supplies, and Manila rope. The store
and clinic were located on Juan Luna Street in Binondo.

Don Pedro Picornell, a friend of an employee there, recalled that:

The clinic bore the Order’s Coat of Arms over its entrance and dispensed first aid to residents of the area in Binondo where his store and office were situated. It was completely funded by Don Paulino.

Many were caught at Sunday mass celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when war came to the islands on December 8, 1941, forged by the Japanese Imperial Army. Don Paulino had no recourse but to close his clinic for indigent patients.

Not four months later, on April 9, 1942, the Japanese had beaten around 70,000 Filipino and 15,000 American soldiers in Bataan, upon which the prisoners trudged waterless, wounded and hungry over a hundred kilometers to the prison camp. Among them was Ernesto Rufino, a future president of the Knights of Malta.

In 1948, around the time he was named the honorary vice-consul of the Republic of Costa Rica, Señor Sampedro fulfilled his desire to reconnect with the Order when he formed the Spanish Order of Malta Delegation in the Philippines. Founded primarily for his fellow Spanish Knights, he also welcomed into the group a number of prominent Filipinos who took an interest in joining the Order.

There was no better time for a Christian Hospitaller Order to be established in the Philippines. The war and the period after it were especially difficult for Filipinos. What Manila had once been called, The Pearl of the Orient, had been so flattened that the city and the rest of the country had had to rebuild virtually from rubble. (The islands had paid the terrible price exacted by the Japanese Imperial Army for being a colony of the United States.)

William Manchester described the Philippine capital’s fate in American Caesar:

Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964:

The devastation of Manila was one of the great tragedies of World War II. Of Allied cities in those war years, only Warsaw suffered more. Seventy percent of the utilities, 75 percent of the factories, 80 percent of the southern residential district, and 100 percent of the business district were razed. Nearly 100,000 Filipinos were murdered by the Japanese [in the days between February 3 and March 3, 1945]. Hospitals were set afire after their patients had been strapped to their beds. The corpses of males were mutilated, females of all ages were raped before they were slain, and babies’ eyeballs were gouged out and smeared on walls like jelly. The middle class, the professionals and white-collar workers, suffered most.

The writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, whose husband was tortured and killed by Japanese soldiers while she was heavily pregnant, wrote of the personal sense of dislocation her countrymen felt during that period in her essay “The War”:

Filipinos… are inclined to regard the period of the Pacific War and the equally abrasive years that followed the return of the Americans as the most important watershed of their lives. The degree of social disorganization — perhaps reorganization is a better word — and of personal dislocation was such that we still have not tired of reminding ourselves of what we owe — in a complimentary as well as a pejorative sense — to the war.

Two million people died in the vicious war, while virtually all the major Philippine cities lay in incredible ruin. In spite of the country’s pitiful state, the United States gave the country its independence in 1946, even while there were no funds to rebuild the war-torn islands. Performing their Hospitaller duties postwar as best they could, the Delegation, also called the Caballeros de Malta, were a major help, financing the large orphanage Hospicio de San Jose’s daily food and medical requirements and rebuilding the old Balala Hospital in Culion, Palawan. The leprosarium had had to end its operations when Japanese troops had taken over the island.

WHEN WERE WOMEN INVITED INTO THE ORDER?

The Order’s records show that as early as 1952, under the Spanish Delegation, Doña Victoria L. de Araneta, the founder of the engineering school FEATI, was conferred a Dame of the Order of Malta. Another Dame, Doña Luisa de Elizalde y Turalde, was conferred a Dame in 1966. However, Ramon Pedrosa, who joined the Order in the 1970s, claimed that he was responsible for “incorporating Dames into the Order.”

Inspired by the Spanish Delegation’s works of mercy, Filipinos were encouraged to form their own Order. Finally, this came to fruition in 1957, with the Grand Magistry in Rome giving its blessing for the conversion of the delegation into a national association: the Philippine Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Sadly, Don Paulino Miranda de Sampedro had died the year before, having been a Delegate (his official title as the Delegation’s leader), until his death in 1956. Henceforth, Ambassador Manuel Morán took the helm as the Philippine Association’s first president.

Prior to serving as president of the Order, Manuel Morán could claim a long list of impressive. Among them, he had served as Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court immediately after the war from 1945 to 1951. Also, he had been the first Philippine ambassador to Spain as well as to the Holy See, from 1951 to 1953. Aside from these posts, Morán was renowned as the Father of Philippine Remedial Law, having authored several volumes on the subject.

Even before his time as president of the Order, Morán’s concern for justice was apparent in the 1938 Cuevo-Barredo case. After the lower court decided to absolve defendant Fausto Barredo, plaintiff Silvestra Cuevo petitioned a higher court to review the ruling.

Carpenter Anastacio Lozano had drowned when his foreman ordered him to recover a log carried away by the current during a strong typhoon. Initially, the court viewed this merely as an accident, arguing that the defendant, as the job’s contractor, was not accountable for the drowning since it was not due to a defect in their work condition.

But Morán saw the situation differently, saying, “Bravery bordering on heroism should not be condemned but commended. If there is negligence at all, it is the negligence of the employer (who places) more value upon a piece of floating log than upon his employee’s life.”

In the landmark case, The Supreme Court upheld his opinion, which reversed the lower court’s judgment, concluding that the foreman had been negligent in not taking the necessary precautions to avoid his worker’s death.

Under Morán, as president of the Order, negotiations commenced with the Philippine government during the incumbency of President Diosdado Macapagal. The Order sought to represent itself not just as an organization, but as an actual embassy of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, with the government recognizing the Hospitaller Order’s sovereignty and extraterritoriality. This status would allow the Order to elect ambassadors, as well as be granted the diplomatic privileges given to embassies, as stipulated in the Order’s original charter handed down by the Pope in the 12th Century.

The Order’s diplomatic status would allow the Hospitallers to receive much aid from members abroad which would be exempt from paying Customs duties and taxes.

The ease by which the Order was granted an audience with the head of state was a testament to the prominence of its Filipino members and their hard work.

In 1965, Diosdado Macapagal lost his bid for presidential reelection to Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, a lawyer, and that year was the start of what eventually would become a two decade-long dictatorship.

Three officers were elected by the Philippine Association that same year. Don Ernesto V. Lagdameo succeeded Manuel Morán as president. Resulting from the foundation laid out by Morán and Macapagal, negotiations for diplomatic relations were completed under President Marcos. Forthwith, the ambassador of the Republic of the Philippines to the Holy See, Don Benigno Toda y Toledo, Sr. was named the Filipino Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Sovereign Order in Rome in July 1965, bringing the Order closer to its goal of establishing an embassy. A few other change of hands: In 1966, the Marquis of Rafal, Don Fernando Manuel Villena arrived in Manila to become the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Extraordinary of the Order of Malta to the Philippines.

Two years later, in 1968, Don Eduardo Ortigas y Vargas was elected as the new president of the Association. A scion of the forward-thinking and prominent Ortigas family, his parents were Don Francisco Ortigas and Julia Vargas, who own and developed the 4,033-hectares that cover the area from San Juan, Pasig, and Quezon City.

Appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of the Philippines to the Sovereign Military Order in Rome in 1970, was Don José María Soriano of the San Miguel Corporation and Soriano y Cia.

Don Ernesto D. Rufino, Sr., bemedalled war hero and major donor to the reconstruction of the war-torn Manila Cathedral, succeeded Señor Ortigas as president of the Order.

In the days when the Philippines’ business leaders were referred to as “The Sugar King,” and “The Accesoria King,” — an accesoria is a two-storey residential apartment — Ernesto D. Rufino was referred to as “The Cinema King” for the many movie houses he owned or managed all over Metro Manila. The deeply religious Knight’s wife, Dame Elvira, joined the Order later. A prayerful man, Don Ernesto went to Mass daily, and was Treasurer of the Family Rosary Crusade of Father Peyton for many years until his late eighties. He donated projectors and films to aid in propagating the Rosary habit throughout the Philippines.

Also on the Family Crusade’s Board at some point was Don José María Soriano, whose many contributions to the Order’s growth included building a runway in Culion, where the Order worked actively at the leper colony, to enable trips by plane, instead of a two-day boat trip.

All throughout this period, the Order continued to fulfill their primary mission as Hospitallers purposefully, volunteering their services and helping in various ways those in need, especially their Lords, the sick and the poor, without seeking personal glory.

The Knights and Dames were keen to remember that their goal was not to tally the number of activities performed or people served, but to demonstrate sincere compassion, empathy, and love for their brothers in need.

Hospitallers play a major role in the Philippines: the islands often place Number One on the “most number of disasters in the world” list. Earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis and storm surges, tornados, floods, landslides, and volcano eruptions, all of which force humans and their work animals to flee, are commonplace. All these cataclysms keep the Order quite busy, to say the least.

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 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 to which he had paid a visit.

This charitable activity was later expanded to embrace all other Philippine Leprosaria, particularly the Central Luzon Leprosarium (now the Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Hospital) in Tala, Caloocan, in North Manila. 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 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 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.

In 1974, architect José María Zaragoza was elected the Philippine Order’s leader, taking on Sampedro’s old title as Delegate instead of president. Under his guidance, the Order founded its financial arm, the Philippine Hospitaller Foundation of the Order of Malta.

An important member of the Order, Zaragoza was a devout man. His daughter Loudette Zaragoza-Banson recalled in a People magazine interview that “his life was so deeply rooted in his love for God and his devotion to Mama Virgen.”

So tangible was that devotion that Rubin David F. Defeo wrote in José María V. Zaragoza, Architecture for God, For Man that he “had a mission to build churches.” As many as 45 churches are credited to him. These do not include other structures he designed out of Christian good will as a Knight of Malta, such as the rebuilt Balala Hospital in Culion and the Tala Leprosarium in Caloocan City, both for the leprosy-afflicted whose treatment the Knights sponsored. For his work, Zaragoza was posthumously recognized as a National Artist for Architecture in 2014.

In partnership with the Isabel Cultural Corporation and the Philippine Jesuits, the Order founded the “Culion Foundation, Inc.,” a non-profit organization focused on improving public health and empowering marginalized communities in Culion, Palawan. Formally organized in 1976, the foundation supported the social development and economic amelioration program for patients of the leprosarium and their families. The program included agricultural projects and a fisherman’s cooperative, such as a project that taught them basnigan (a fishing method).

Three years later, the Culion Foundation started a scholarship program to support the Culion children pursuing higher education at various universities in Metro Manila, covering their tuition fees, board and lodging, and all their other needs. Concurrently, the Philippine Leprosy Coordinating Committee was formed in 1978, in no small part due to the Order’s deep involvement in the Philippine Leprosy Program.

Through the efforts of Don Antonio C. Delgado when he was Ambassador of the Philippines to the Holy See, embassies between the Philippines and Rome were also established in 1976.

That year, Don José María Soriano retired from his post as Minister Plenipotentiary of the Philippines to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The post would ultimately retire with him, as in 1978, an embassy for the Order of Malta was finally established in the Philippines, allowing the Order to elect its own ambassador. Don José presented his credentials to President Marcos that same year and became the Order’s first Ambassador to the Philippines.

The Order then started taking on the task of receiving and delivering medicines because as an embassy it was privileged to not have to go through Customs nor pay duties and taxes, which sped up the goods’ processing time as well as saved the Order from huge expenses which could instead go to the poor.

On February 1, 1979, then Sovereign Military Order of Malta Prince and Grand Master Frá Angelo de Mojana di Cologna paid the Philippines a five-day State Visit, the fruit of the efforts of Don Antonio C. Delgado, Ambassador of the Philippines to the Holy See. Officially a guest of Philippine President Marcos, the Grand Master visited the Leprosaria at Culion and Tala in the company of Ambassadors Soriano and Delgado to observe firsthand the Order’s work with Philippine lepers. On his second day, Grand Master Frá Angelo de Mojana di Cologna was honored by President Marcos with the conferment of the Order of Sikatuna, Rank of Raja, the highest of the Philippine diplomatic orders of merit.

Don José María Soriano’s tenure as Ambassador of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to the Philippines ended in 1980. He was succeeded by Don Ernesto V. Lagdameo, himself a past president of the Order. In so doing, Lagdameo became the first Filipino ambassador of a foreign state to the Philippines, Soriano being of Spanish descent.

The 1980’s was a pivotal period for the nation. To usher in a parliamentary government, Marcos announced his intention to lift martial law in 1981, in time for Pope John Paul II’s Philippine visit. However, despite lifting it, he retained his extra-judiciary powers. Mindful of the separation of church and state, His Holiness, himself from Poland, a nation under martial law in the 1980’s, nevertheless touched on human rights:

Even in exceptional situations that may at times arise, one can never justify any violation of the fundamental dignity of the human person or of the basic rights that safeguard this dignity. Legitimate concern for the security of a nation, as demanded by the common good, could lead to the temptation of subjugating to the State the human being and his or her dignity and rights. Any apparent conflict between the exigencies of security and of the citizens’ basic rights must be resolved according to the fundamental principle – upheld always by the Church – that social organization exists only for the service of man and for the protection of his dignity, and that it cannot claim to serve the common good when human rights are not safeguarded.

Further hinting strongly of a path for the Philippine leadership to follow, he added:

It is my hope and prayer that all the Filipino people and their leaders will never cease to honor their commitment to a development that is fully human and that overcomes situations and structures of inequality, injustice and poverty in the name of the sacredness of humanity. I pray that everyone will work together with generosity and courage, without hatred, class struggle or fratricidal strife, resisting all temptations to materialistic or violent ideologies.

In 1981, Don Jesus S. Cabarrus, Sr., founder and chairman of Marinduque Mining Industrial Corporation, among many other gold and nickel mines, became the Philippine Order’s president. Learning that the United Nations was supporting a large shelter camp for Vietnamese war refugees in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, he established an Order of Malta Primary Health Care Center there by special arrangement with the Philippine government and the United Nations. The medical project was funded by the Ouvres Hospitalieres de l’Ordre de Malta (France), with the project providing medical assistance and services such as pre- and post-natal care, Day Care Center services, and Family Planning and counseling for Vietnamese refugees and Filipinos who lived near the camp.

In the United States, a political opponent of President Marcos announced he was returning to Manila in August 1983, having completed professorial stints at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The decision to return would turn out to be fatal.

On August 21, 1983, while Ninoy Aquino’s supporters and reporters waited in the terminal building at the Manila International Airport, two shots rang out. Descending the plane’s staircase, Aquino had been shot in cold blood by his uniformed military escorts. While it was generally accepted that President Marcos had not ordered the assassination because he was too sick to order it, the killing led to an ocean of political demonstrations led by Aquino’s widow, Corazon Aquino, which slowly undermined the Marcos regime.

Through the unrest, in 1984, Don Antonio Infante y Roxas replaced Don Jesus Cabarrus after being elected the Order’s new president. Don Antonio was one of Don José Maria Soriano’s three musketeers and would establish the non-profit Tala foundation, to assist the economically-challenged residents of Tala, helping them to bolster their incomes.

To quiet the dissent against his regime, Marcos declared a snap presidential election which was held in February 1986, with Aquino’s widow running against him.

While Marcos claimed to have won the election, his opponent, Corazon Aquino went ahead to proclaim victory on February 16, 1986. Surprisingly, the nation’s Defense minister and the deputy Army chief led a rebellion against Marcos on February 22.

Many of Marcos’s allies turned their backs on him and announced their withdrawal of support from a military camp in Manila.

It was the Church led by Cardinal Sin that called on the populace to show up on the wide highway outside the military camp to protect the rebels. Heeding Cardinal Sin’s call, massive crowds joined to form a human barricade protecting the rebels. Many more arrived when an announcement from Radio Veritas, operated by the Archdiocese of Manila, entreated the Christian laity and the public at large to support the rebels. Soldiers were ordered to break up the protests but many left their ranks, choosing instead to join the peaceful protesters. By the third day, hundreds of thousands had arrived, with human barricades led by Catholic nuns blocking menacing tanks rolling down the highway.

On February 25, 1986, Corazon Aquino was sworn in as president of the Republic of the Philippines. Panicked, Ferdinand Marcos held his own inauguration at the Malacañang Palace an hour later, but it was all for naught, and later that day, the entire Marcos family left the palace to fly to Hawaii, where they remained in exile. Marcos died there in 1989.

CBS anchorman Bob Simon reported that, “We Americans like to think we taught the Filipinos democracy. Well, tonight they are teaching the world.” “People Power” had prevailed, to be emulated in Egypt and elsewhere.

In the same year as the EDSA Revolution, Don Antonio C. Delgado became the Order’s new Ambassador to the Philippines.

While change was taking place country-wide, an important medical development was announced in Culion. Journalist Maria Ceres P. Doyo wrote in an essay in the book “Culion Island: A Leper Colony’s 100-Year Journey Toward Healing,” that “the startling news of a genuine cure for leprosy came in the 1980’s.” The multi-drug therapy (MDT), a kind of treatment that consists of giving patients a combination of drugs such as lamprene, rifampicin, and dapsone, was endorsed by the World Health Organization in 1981. The Department of Health began offering the drugs for free, and through the Culion Foundation, the Order campaigned for the lepers to try the new treatment, hopeful that it would cure them at last.

By 1987, 121 Culion patients were on the treatment, which proved to be widely successful, making Culion among the pioneers of the MDT regimen. With the efforts of the Order and loyal Culion doctors, there was no longer a need to isolate Hansenite patients, and, as Dr. Paul A. Evangelista wrote in the essay “The Health Care Services of Culion Sanitarium” from the book “Culion: A 100 Years of Transformation Towards a New Beginning:”

At the end of Martial Rule, and at the start of the new government, Balala Hospital (for non-Hansenites) was closed. The closure started the integration of the General Hospital with the Leprosy Service.

Culion patients, no longer pariahs, were finally free from what was once an incurable disease, just as the Philippines was liberated from Marcos’s dictatorship.