Maltese nun seeking funds for new school in the Philippines

About 20 Filipino students listened intently to Sr Annie Catania's lecture on religion as they sat in the windowless basement of the parish church of San Isidro Labrador, in the Philippines.

Every day 180 students from this poor region pile into the basement to get an education, but the parish, which falls under the Diocese of Novaliches, is trying to raise money to build a new school to provide them with a better environment.

Sr Catania, a Maltese Dorothean nun who is working with the poor in the Philippines, has made it her mission to help the parish in its quest and is banking on Maltese generosity to realise this project.

Over the past four years the parish has managed to collect Lm5,000 and Sr Annie raised a further Lm1,000 following an appeal in The Times last year.

However, the one-storey school, which is projected to cater for 400 students, will cost about Lm54,000 to construct.

"While labour is cheap, the building material is expensive since most of it is imported," Sr Catania said in an interview.

Sr Catania, who is in Malta on a brief visit to celebrate her brother's Golden Jubilee of his first Mass, is hopeful that she will be able to raise some more funds before she returns to the Philippines.

While here she is planning a couple of fund-raising events, which are being fully endorsed by the Bishop of the diocese of Novaliches, Rev. Antonio Tobias, who has written a letter to potential benefactors.

In his letter the Bishop said that the parish was truly hoping to build a new school to provide an adequate place for learning and to attract more students.

Sr Catania said once the school was up and running the plan was to provide an education for students with parents who could afford to pay a small sum to cover the teachers' salary in the morning and then give free education to the poor students in the evening.

"The parish is keen not to lose its Catholic followers and the school will be one way of attracting more people to its fold," she said.

Sr Catania, who is bent on helping to improve the lives of these people, said she was deeply affected by the poverty in the region. "Last time a little girl in my class was crying and when I asked what was wrong she just said she was hungry and had nothing to eat - she wolfed down the banana I gave her," she said.

The other day Sr Catania was talking to a mother of three children who told the nun she had been giving her daughters warm water with sugar for the past week because she had no food to give them. "When I invited her to join us to eat something, she politely declined because she did not wish to be better off than her daughters and she preferred to suffer with them since they were not there to share the food.

"The Filipinos are very nice, clean people who have a great pride, despite their poverty and I will try to help them in any way I can," she said.

On her free Saturday mornings Sr Catania dedicates her time to teaching the women of the locality how to sew and crochet. Three of the women have already found a job sewing clothes in a factory and two others are crocheting clothes and selling them to make a living.

Sr Catania is organising a buffet dinner to raise funds. This event is being held at the Suncrest Hotel, Qawra on September 10 at 7.30 p.m. For tickets call on 2143 1367 or 7904 0452.

Donations towards the new school in the Philippines can be deposited in Bank of Valletta account 18208305010 or made directly to Sr Catania (9946 5507).