TO the followers and believers mourning the sudden, unexpected passing of the healing priest, Fr. Fernando Suarez, as he was playing tennis last Tuesday with other priests in Alabang, the news could not have come at a worse time. He was only three days away from his 52nd birthday, and think how many more of the sick and suffering he could have healed and helped!
“I feel like I have been orphaned,” said Deedee Siytangco, who announced the news to add to a mounting pile of negative headlines. African swine fever discovered in a remote town in Davao Occ. The first death in the Philippines due to the “Novel” coronavirus, at a mortality rate of 50 percent as pointed out by Senator Ralph Recto, the patient being one of two infected (the other being his girlfriend). The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention preparing for a potential pandemic. Outbreak of bird flu in China. In Manila, the collapse of an unfinished portion of Skyway 3 after a fire in the vicinity caused its steel parts to melt.
Father Suarez was a diminutive priest – “I’m your Pinoy Santo Niño” – who walked with a big stick. So big that archbishops declared him persona non grata in their dioceses. The reasons were never made public although there were innuendoes of misuse of funds donated by the faithful, including famous men and women whom he had healed, maybe even cured. Only when published reports came out of the Vatican that he had been cleared of charges of sexual abuse of young men did it dawn on the disinterested that money was not the root (of the rumors), after all.
Was Father Suarez so overjoyed with the judgment, issued last month, that his heart could not contain the excitement of going back to his calling? Fact is, after he was barred from his ministry, he soldiered on and built a church and a seminary away from the sight of his superiors in Luzon, under supervision of a cleric who sympathized with his mission for Mary, Mother of the Poor.
His remains lie in state at Heritage Park until tomorrow, to be transported to his hometown in Butong, Taal. “Please omit flowers but donate to Batangas evacuation centers.”
