Looking back on six decades in the Philippines

WHEN Fr Michael Doohan left The Hand in the Kilmurry Ibrickane parish almost 60 years ago, he didn’t set foot in his native townland again for six years. A lot had changed for the Philippines-based Columban missionary priest when he returned to his homestead in 1959.
“I missed my father’s funeral. He was dead and almost buried by the time I heard it. There was no communication that time. Telegrams could be rather slow if you weren’t living near a town. It was the same with my mother but you had to take those things. There was no way that you could come home that time,” the now retired Fr Doohan told The Clare Champion this week, during his now annual visit from his adopted home in South-East Asia.
His brother, Fr John (RIP), went to the Philippines in 1948 and was the first to hear about their parents’ deaths.
“My brother got the telegrams for each of them. When my dad died, believe it or not, I was saying my prayers in the church. When my mother died, I was saying mass. John came along and said ‘say that one now for mammy’,” Fr Michael recalls.
Ordained in December 1952, Fr Michael, who was educated at Doolough National School and St Flannan’s College, left for the Philippines in September 1953.
His interest in the missions derived mostly from the influence of a priest who regularly visited St Flannan’s in his quest to acquire potential missionaries.
“His name was Fr Jack Byrne. He’d convince the crows to sing. But I didn’t go to China, thanks to Mao Tse Tung,” Fr Michael laughs, referring to the fact that his brother Fr John initially expressed an interest in going to China, which had also alerted Michael to the possibility.
These days, Fr Michael feels more Filipino than Irish and doesn’t regret a minute of the six decades he has lived and worked in Asia. However, he feels his upbringing in West Clare steeled him for life as a missionary priest.
“You couldn’t have better training for the missions than at a place called The Hand. You had to work hard and live sparsely. There was no such thing as luxury but we had a good life. Work was part and parcel of life. When they talk about young people now, they say ‘oh, you can’t have young people working’. Once we were able to walk, everybody had something to do but we enjoyed it,” he reflects.
“The Philippines is a fairly big country. They tell me there’s 7,000 islands there. I never counted them but I presume somebody must have counted them when the tide was out. I was halfway down in an island called Negros. I spent all my life in Negros. I was parish priest in pretty big parishes, much bigger than you’d have here and the population was pretty big also. Per priest you’ve have an average of 25,000 parishioners,” Fr Michael explains.
Transport in rural Philippines is scarce. He often had to navigate by either foot or on horseback.
“I spent a big part of my life in mountainy areas. Talk about roads? I didn’t have a helicopter and there were no roads so it was either shanks’mare or a little pony. You couldn’t have a pony and trap because you had no roads. Eventually, I got a saddle. Without a saddle, you’d have a sore butt. Thanks be to God, I was always out in rural villages until the end. I was in a town in the end but you could pass through the town without knowing that you had passed through it. It was very small and very rural,” he remembers.
As for where he feels most at home, Fr Michael has no doubt. “I’m a stranger here [Ireland] in the sense that I know very few people at this stage of my life. Most of my age have changed their address. They’re gone beyond outer space. The number of my classmates who are alive now are very, very few. I thank the Lord and then the doctors for my health. If it were not for good doctors, I’d have joined my classmates. I had a number of sicknesses in my life but I got over them, thanks to the doctors.  I’ve spent 25 years of my young days in Ireland. I’ve spent 60 years in the Philippines. I’ve eaten a lot of rice. I’m more at home in the Philippines now,” Fr Michael maintains.
Naturally, he has developed a deep bond with the Filipino people.
“They’ve never really had good opportunities. They were colonised by the Spanish, the Japanese and then by the Americans. It’s only in the last 50 years or so that they’ve got independence. The rank and file of Filipinos haven’t got the opportunities. You have some people that have too much but what you call the middle class here have very little. Very few of the middle class would be able to afford a decent house or a car.
“With the rank and file of the poor, there is no such thing as a car. But the one thing they go in for is education and then they go abroad. The biggest source of income in the Philippines is people working abroad and sending money home. It’s the biggest income we have in the country,” Fr Michael, who lives in the town of Binalbagan, reveals.
He cannot bring himself to say a bad word about anyone, even the former Filipino dictator, Fredinand Marcus, or his shoe-loving wife, Imelda.
“No matter how bad anyone is, there’s some good in them. You might think of Imelda Marcus for the shoes but she set up a heart centre, a kidney centre and hospitals in Manila. She doesn’t get credit for those things. The same with her husband Ferdinand Marcus. In spite of the fact that he was a dictator, it was he that gave us roads, communications and rural electricity. I’d prefer to look at the good side,” Fr Michael reiterates.
He will return to the Philippines at the end of August but before he does, Fr Michael will celebrate a thanksgiving mass in Coore Church on August 18 at 2pm.