The mission
By Antonio Montalvan II
Inquirer News Service

THE WOMAN LOOKED NOT ONLY FORLORN. She had, in fact, a hideous appearance. Her skin was peeling off. From the fringes, she had motioned for the priest to go near her. The place was the nursing home of Blessed Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Tondo, Manila.

The woman told her story to the priest. Her husband was an alcoholic who often beat her black and blue. One night, coming home drunk, he poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. How she escaped and managed to drag her body to reach the highway was a puzzlement, the priest related. There she found help from good Samaritans who brought her to the provincial hospital. More puzzling was she found her way to the Missionaries of Charity in faraway Tondo.

When he asked her how old she was, the priest was amazed. She was only 23 years old. When he asked her where she came from, he was even more amazed. She came from Cagayan de Oro. Everything happened in the urban barangay of Lapasan.

The priest was the Rev. Fr. Daniel Patrick Huang, S.J., provincial superior of the Jesuits in the Philippines. The place where he told that story was Cagayan de Oro, a city that he was familiar with in the past, including Lapasan. It was in this city where he spent his regency years as a young Jesuit. The occasion was the formal investiture of the new president of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan.

Father Huang disturbed his audience with his heartrending story. The silence that engulfed his narration was deafening. But the mission of Catholic universities, he said, is to heal a world that is broken. That is how he said it: not a broken world, but "a world that is broken." It is, then, not just to reach out to battered and burned wives, but to reconstruct a society that no longer has the values, where human dignity was once held supreme.

Universities are for learning, but of what kind? In a world that cannot even secure the frail and the endangered, what can a university do? The answer does not even wholly lie in academic curricula. Neither is it found in accreditations and CHED regulations. Perhaps, it lies partly in the integrity of an institution's faculty. Perhaps, it can be found partially in a university's vision and goals, however rhetorical many seem to be. The answer certainly lies in a constellation of all these. And then more.

Father Huang's narration was certainly disturbing in an age where universities are a dime a dozen. How many of them truly realize that mission? Too often, we decry the decline of many of our young graduates' communication skills. But, perhaps, more sobering is the decline of the values of our young. Are our universities truly capable of confronting a world that is changing in a dizzying pace?

The man most probably disturbed by the message of that moment was the 45-year-old Jesuit Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin. Father Jett's credentials are impressive: valedictorian of his college graduating class at Ateneo de Manila University, master's degree at Marquette University in Wisconsin, and summa cum laude in his doctorate of Atmospheric Physics at Georgia Institute of Technology. Following his stint as a scientist at the Manila Observatory, the presidency of Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan came as a plum post for this rising Jesuit star. Father Jett heads the first university in Mindanao, and the first Jesuit university in the entire Philippines. Xavier U ranked No. 5 in a recent academic evaluation of Philippine universities, after two UP units, De La Salle University, and St. Louis University of Baguio. It is also the richest of all the Ateneos.

But this is no longer the same Mindanao it used to be. Where before Xavier was the fulcrum of Cagayan de Oro sociopolitical and cultural life, today there are two other universities in the city, with two more applying for university status. One of these will be a state university for science and technology. Moreover, the promotion of culture and the arts and Mindanao peace-building is being led by Capitol University, which has also entered into research fellowships with prominent American institutions of higher learning. I speak as an alumnus of Xavier-Ateneo. Today, universities can only improve the quality of education in provincial cities by cooperating as a network.
A hundred days into his new Mindanao assignment, Father Jett has not only met with all the sectors of the university, but also with the main players of the community-political leaders, government planners, educational administrators and civic stalwarts of Northern Mindanao. His investiture was attended also by Muslims and lumads.

And therein probably lies the secret of a university's mission. For a university can be effective only inasmuch as it is operative in its mission to the community it serves. Communities are not only made up of personalities. More importantly, it is made up of souls, lost souls in fact. It is also made up of families where the integrity of the young is first nurtured. The home is the genesis of education. A university can only do so much, yes, but it must be able to complement the education that takes place in the family, and then to sustain the integrity of the family for future generations. Without that community, a university is simply one that whirls aimlessly in space.

Degrees are certainly important. But they are only as important as a university's mission. If diploma mills shortsell society of what it truly deserves, universities that have no concern for the community they serve do more violence to a world that is broken.

The truth truly sets people free.

Comments to monta@cu-cdo.edu.ph

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