June 2005 | Vol 41 No 6 | Index
 

From the Director…

THE CELEBRATION
By Fr. Antoninus Wall, O.P.

t was an extraordinary week of celebration.  I had never before (or since) participated in such a lengthy period of communal joy. 

The celebration began on a Monday morning with a concelebrated High Mass in which Fr. Martin Walsh, O.P. participated.  All the students from the three schools – elementary, secondary and college – neatly outfitted, were on hand.  The congregation included parents, relatives, past graduates, and members of the community.  Every seat in the enormous church was occupied, with many standing in the back and along the sides.  The student choir sang beautifully and the liturgy was superior.

The week unfolded with organization that brought special meaning and joy to each day.  One day involved competition of drill teams from each of the three schools.  The next was followed by competition among cheerleading groups from the first grade up to the seniors of the college.  Every student had a part to play.  At the end of each day, guest judges from the outside were on hand to evaluate the performances and to award prizes to the cheers of students, parents, and guests.  One day was devoted to celebrating the gifts of the earth, with a drama and dance rejoicing in the powers of nature set in place by Divine Providence.  Following the morning drama, the students spent the day planting hundreds of trees and flowers on the school and convent grounds.  Faculty members were active participants in all of these activities.

The highlight of the weeklong celebration was the annual grand ball on Saturday night.  College seniors and alumni in formal gowns and dress, danced gracefully to music coming from a live orchestra.   The effect was that of an out-of-world experience.

his was a week of celebration that would have been special if staged any place in the world.  But what made this week truly unique was that it took place  in a leper colony.   The participants were either lepers or members of families that included lepers.  The occasion for this wonderful week was the 50^th anniversary of the founding of Holy Rosary Teaching College in the leper colony of Tala, some 18 miles east of Manila City.  By the foundation of this college, (preceded by the establishment of an elementary school and high school), Tala became the only leper colony in the world where a leper could attend school and graduate with a college degree as a licensed teacher from a fully accredited educational program.  Because of the role that the Western Dominican Province and the Dominican Mission Foundation played in this extraordinary project, Father Walsh and I had been invited to this celebration of pure joy.

THE VISION

The vision that brought this unique educational program to Tala came from a gifted Dominican priest of our Western Dominican Province.  As a chaplain in the U.S. military, he came upon this leper colony in 1947.  The lepers there were confined to a quasi-concentration camp setting.  Denied freedom of contact with the outside world because of the fear of contagion, the lepers existed in the extreme of material poverty: inadequate housing, food, and medical attention, and no social life.  They were a demoralized people with no future.  Physically they had nothing; but spiritually they revealed a rare beauty.  Christ’s presence was alive in their souls. The goal was to make available to the beloved lepers all the opportunities for  spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and social growth that would have been available to them if their dread disease had not condemned them to isolation from the world in the quagmires of Tala.

 major lack in the lives of the lepers of Tala was the absence of any opportunity for even the most limited education.  With this deficiency in mind, an elementary school was established in 1947.  This was      followed by the foundation of a high school.  In 1951 came the crowning achievement – the establishment of Holy Rosary College.  The vision was to educate lepers to be qualified to teach their fellow lepers. The desire for a grammar school, and even a high school, for the lepers made good sense to many.  But to most it made no sense to educate fully qualified leper teachers who could never leave the confines of Tala.  Little could the critics have known that one day the dread disease would be brought under control and that today leper graduates of Holy Rosary College hold positions as teachers all over the Philippine Islands.

In order to carry out this project, funding for the construction of the school buildings, for the necessary equipment, and for teacher salaries   had   to  be  secured.

This was all done without receiving a single penny from the government.  The success in securing this funding is one of the many miracles of Tala.  For over 50 years the schools have operated with no fees of any kind required of the students who are lepers or children of lepers.  Since 1987, the endowment has continued to underwrite the financial operation of the schools.  With this endowment almost depleted, the Dominicans of the Philippines together with the Dominican Mission Foundation are faced with the challenge of providing funds to keep this miracle of Tala alive.

week of celebration at Tala coming to a close, I sensed that I had been experiencing what might be described as a Communal Transubstanti-ation.  Christ acting through this special Dominican Missionary had transformed this demoralized, despairing community of lepers into a “communion of saints” on earth, radiating a unique peace, unity, hopefulness, and happiness, which came from the richness of Christ’s presence within them.  It is unlike any community that I have ever experienced.  This was the meaning of the explosion of joy that Fr. Walsh and I shared throughout that special week.

Our challenge is to keep this beautiful work alive and growing!