Healing priest touches San Carlos crowd

Stampede! Relentless crowd rushes to the stage at the City Auditorium and fight their way up for the healing touch of Rev. Fr. Fernando M. Suarez. Youth volunteers of the Charismatic Movement struggle to form a human barricade to prevent a stampede.  

She had totally given up on medicines and her parents had brought her home from Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital in Bacolod City.

She has kidney disease that caused her stomach to bloat and she tested positive of lupus.

On August 2, Thursday, Miriam's parents took her again from their home in Caticlan, Barangay Rizal and brought her, not to a hospital this time, but to the City Auditorium that the 18-year old may receive healing from God through Rev. Fr. Fernando M. Suarez.

On a folding bed at the foot of the stage Miriam was sprawled, an oxygen tank by her side delivering the aid to her shallow breathing. But this girl's abject sickness did not elicit the mercy of the desperate crowd that rushed, stampede-like, to the stage to be touched by Fr. Suarez.

The event drew around 5,000 believers, some searched for physical cure while others hoped for spiritual healing, as could be read from their name tags. And little did the organizers from the San Carlos Diocese Service Committee, Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement knew that the crowd would be so unbending to pleas for order and discipline.

‘Pick up your mat and go home’

The chaos aside, Fr. Suarez proceeded to touch the foreheads of each of those present. Some of them fainted and cried claiming that their ills had been healed.

Michael Navaja, 28, had a spinal cord injury. His parents, Rosa and Romeo Navaja could not afford to send him to specialists and therapists. The mother, a laundrywoman, said that they brought him to San Carlos City Hospital but they were never able to bring him to higher medical institutions. Instead, they had him treated through local remedies or Binisaya to no avail.

Michael had not been able to walk since May and had suffered back pain for a year already. But when Fr. Suarez came to him, he held on the priest's hand. As the healer drew up the sick from his mat, those limp, thin legs started walking again.

All the way to the centerline, Fr. Suarez guided the sick man taking feeble steps, while Rosa rolled up her son's mat, already prepared to go home.

Such were the miraculous healing sights that took place after the Healing Mass that Fr. Suarez officiated with the 13 priests from the Dioceses of San Carlos and Bacolod in attendance.

It’s God

But the healing priest put forward a disclaimer during his homily as in his interview with NRWP. He emphasized that he cannot heal but that it is God who does and that what he has is only a gift. He could not keep the gift for himself but he must share to others.

The gift

His gift manifested when he was still 16 and a chemical engineering freshman at Adamson University. There was a lame old woman in Quiapo, he told. He took pity on her and prayed over her. To both their surprise, the woman started to walk.

But he did not immediately become a priest. He finished his college course instead and became a chemical engineer working in the country and abroad.

At 25, he went to a seminary in Canada and was ordained there in 2002. Since then, he had been conducting healing masses and sessions across more than a hundred countries around the globe and has served roughly 15 M people.

New evangelization

Fr. Suarez added that he believes that his work is a loud response to Pope Benedict XVI's call for Filipino bishops to initiate the "new evangelization" of the country. He said that the number of people who flock his healing masses is proof that healing is a work of evangelization.

"Healing is the most concrete form of evangelization," he said and sited the several occasions of Jesus Christ healing the sick in the Bible.

He also attested that even non-Catholics, who are growing in numbers, attend his healing sessions and some of them, even the Muslims, were converted.

Now he has a religious order, the Missionaries of Mary Mother of the Poor that he co-founded with the Canadian Fr. Jeff Shannon. Their base is in Occidental Mindoro. 

Money talk

Meanwhile, the organizers, who braced the surge of excitement from the crowd that witnessed healing miracles, clarified that the activity did not require those who attended to give donations.

Hermie Suarez, the leader of the Charismatic Renewal Movement said that they placed 'love offering' boxes on the registration tables at the entrance but anyone may or may not drop a donation.

But the layman Suarez said should they raise enough funds, they will use it to pay for the expenses they incurred during the event and send Fr. Suarez and his team with some stipend.