(Google images)
CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga – It was one good fight, mate.”
Five volunteer lawyers thus bid Sr. Patricia Fox goodbye last Nov. 3, but vowed they would meet again after “we would have exorcised the evil that has possessed the intolerant and bigoted in power.”
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) dismissed earlier the appeal for reconsideration of its earlier order to deport Fox, 71, an Australian national whom the BI deemed as “undesirable alien.”
The missionary religious sister was told to leave the country by Nov. 3. She had been on missionary visa in the Philippines for 27 years.
Despite deportation order from the BI, Fox had applied for renewal of her visa which expired last Sept. 6. Her appeal filed with the Department of Justice against the BI deportation order was, however, junked.
Earlier, Pres. Duterte accused Fox of insulting his administration in rallies and said she had “a foul mouth.”
In an “open letter” to Fox, her volunteer lawyers Edre Olalia, Ephraim Cortez, Jobert Pahilga, Katherine Panguban, and Sol Taule noted: “It is more than six months of living on the edge since you were deceptively invited by Immigration officers and deprived of liberty for being an ‘undesirable alien,’ a label farthest from what you are: soft-spoken, frail, geriatric, low profile yet so passionate, human, humane and lovable you could be everybody’s sweet doting grandmother.”
“You have inspired us immensely and taught us many lessons and values we should all have learned in grade school,” they said.
“And yet the person who picked on you, the mouth most foul who has no respect for women, the poor, the human rights defenders, the Pope, and just about everybody and anything else would call you ‘foul mouthed’ in the most bizarre contortions of reality,” they lamented.
The lawyers noted that “this oddity thrust you from the obscure into the limelight and made you an overnight rockstar, something you certainly found uncomfortable and do not relish.”
“It was more than six months of legal paperchase, a frenzy of motions, petitions, appeals and applications your indefatigable lawyers frantically churned against a bungling, disconcerted and merciless government machinery and heartless agency. They blinked and fumbled at the start but stuck to their guns to kick you out by all means, many most foul, some pretending not to be, because the infallible and invincible King said so,” they said.
The lawyers told Fox that “your multitude of supporters and instant fans from a broad range of society including the institutional church and the discerning media, and most especially the people’s organizations, stood by you, as you stood by the poor, the workers, the farmers and the indigenous people in what is the most poignant concrete example of living your missionary work.”
“And now it is time to say goodbye. For now. But we will certainly see you again here, there and everywhere, in the factories, in the slums, in the picket lines, in the fields, in the churches, and in the streets,” they said.
They added: “We say farewell for now but we shall await you again with all our hearts and minds as you are leaving your heart and mind with us. Because you will never really leave us.”
“Till we meet again, at which time we hope we would have exorcised the evil that has possessed the intolerant and bigoted in power,” they said.
They added: “And by the way, yes, it was one good, big fight, mate! So long!”
