Father Fernando Suarez

The Canadian woman was declared dead by doctors at the Ottawa Civic Hospital some eight hours before Father Fernando Suarez arrived.

With doctors present and ready to harvest her organs, the Filipino-Canadian priest who was then a seminarian, prayed over her.

She opened her eyes and lived.

 Suarez was stunned. “Let me out of here,” was all he could say.

The woman is now well, Suarez says, and has resumed her normal life.

That case, which happened a decade ago, put Father Fernando on the Catholic map and today he is jet setting around the globe touching millions and working his miracles.

On his website is a growing collection of testimonials from people from all walks of life — all praise and thanks to the man, who cured their back pains, stabilized their cancers, and mended their broken spirits.

“It is not me,” he tells interviewers, convinced that he is just a channel for God’s healing power.

This month Suarez is in The Philippines attracting tens of thousands of people to his healing masses as he continues to amaze, baffle and bring hope to his countrymen.

Julie Tindog was one of those who made the trek to his mass on Boracay Island.

Her nephew, 29-year-old Joseph Clarence Terencio, slurs his speech and lacks control of his limbs due to arterial malformation in the brain since birth, according to Tindog.

Doctors in their hometown of Makato, Aklan, more than 350 kilometers southeast of Manila, said they could do no more for him, she told Union of Catholic Asian News.

Her hopes “soared,” however, when she saw on television that Father Fernando Suarez had arrived in Manila for healing sessions around the country.

Tindog said her nephew has a sense of peace after being prayed on by Father Fernando.
Others like Shirley Sacapano, 32, told UCA News that they were cured of their ailments immediately.

“I saw a light emitting from my body” just before passing out, Sacapano recalled.

She no longer feels the pain she had in her shoulder since falling from a tree as a child.

“I realize it is God’s will to heal people when I pray and touch them,” he said after his mass in Boracay Island.

Born in 1967, in Barrio Butong in Taal, Batangas, Suarez was the eldest of four children of Cervando, who drove a taxi and his mother, Azucena Mortel, a seamstress.

“We weren’t a particularly religious family,” he says. “Our family attended Mass maybe three times a year.”

At an early age, Suarez already knew how to earn a living. At 12 he rented out inflatables at Butong beach.

But God had other plans for him, he said.

When Suarez was 16, he said he came upon a paralyzed woman and took pity on her.

He found himself praying over her and suddenly the woman was walking.
He did not know what to make of it and did not talk about it much.
At that time, announcing it to the world was far from Suarez’s mind.
What was beginning to concern him was the call to a religious life.
“I didn’t respond. I didn’t know a priest.”

He was waiting for cues and signs, but until they came, he just lived one day at a time, pursuing what needed to be done. He kept the call to himself.”

Suarez went to Manila and graduated with a chemical engineering degree from Adamson University, which is run by the Vincentian Fathers.

After college, Suarez entered the Franciscan Order. “After one-and-a-half years, I left. Then I joined the SVD (Society of the Divine Word) but I was asked to leave after six months.”

It was there, at the SVD Christ the King Seminary that, Suarez says, the Virgin Mary appeared to him. “She told me that I would go to a far away place which was cold and windy, and there proclaim the word of God.”

Suarez was in his late 20s when he met a French-Canadian student and tourist named Mark Morin who invited him to Canada and even paid for his fare.

They could have been partners in a business venture but Suarez wanted to pursue the priesthood. That was 1996.

He tried the Diocese of Winnipeg to study as a diocesan priest but it did not work out and he eventually left.

“It was an expensive venture, they said,” he says, chuckling. “They’d have to spend four-and-a-half years on me.”

They preferred ordained Filipino priests who were seeking a life abroad.

He then met priests of the Companions of the Cross (a Canadian congregation founded in the 1980s) and has stayed with them since.

“I was ordained in 2002 when I was 35.”

His superiors quickly became aware of his gift and set him free to reach out to the world.
“I am the only one who was assigned to go worldwide so soon after ordination.”

Suarez’s gift of healing first became known abroad and only later in The Philippines. He has visited many countries, some of them poor, like Uganda where he walked among refugees, orphans, people sick with AIDS, malaria and yellow fever.

Father Jeff Shannon, who accompanies Suarez on his trips, said that one time in Uganda they had to deal with a group of agitated orphaned girls.

“As they approached us for prayer after the Mass, they rested in the Spirit for hours, then cried, wailed and screamed as the Holy Spirit moved in to free and to heal [them]. After three hours of struggle they were delivered and they became as peaceful as doves, full of love.

As they sang and danced their way back to their residence, they witnessed their dormitory light up inside, even though it was late at night and there was no electricity. One girl was healed of blindness.”

This and other miracle stories are recorded in the newsletter of Mary Mother of the Poor Healing Ministry, a foundation Suarez established to help the suffering poor.

Currently, the ministry is feeding 2,000 students daily, sponsoring close to 140 families, 25 seniors, 50 scholars, and 6 seminarians in the poor areas of The Philippines.

The ministry has also hosted medical missions, built homes for needy families and erected classrooms in schools where the children have classes outside.

Soon to become the center of Suarez’s healing ministry is Montemaria (Matuko Point) in the outskirts of Batangas City.

Set on a hill on 20 hectares of land, the center of the Oratory of the Blessed Virgin at Montemaria will have chapels, prayer gardens, Stations of the Cross, retreat houses, campsites, lodging houses, a center for the poor and even a replica of Mary House in Ephesus, an ancient city in Turkey.

The place is meant to draw pilgrims who want to renew their faith.

The Montemaria centerpiece is the 33-story-high statue of Mary Mother of the Poor which will be about as high as the Statue of Liberty and higher than Christ the Redeemer of Brazil.
It will face the sea between Batangas and Mindoro, known to be one of the world’s richest in marine biodiversity.

Nestor Mangio, one of the architects and an avid supporter of Suarez, says the oratory is scheduled to be finished in September 2008.

The project is not wanting in donors. In July, the Companions of the Cross, the congregation to which Suarez belongs, will establish a foundation in The Philippines.

A 40-hour vigil was held early this month with pilgrims who came in droves.

And how does the healing priest relax? “I do sports, I love nature, I love talking to people. I read the spiritual classics — St. Augustine, Francis de Sales. I also like Thomas Merton,” he says.

Currently the favorite priest of the biggest names in The Philippines’ business, politicsal and even showbiz circles, Suarez is remarkably humble.

“I treat everybody the same. No partiality,”he tells members of the Manila media. “He is a very humble man of god…He has raised the dead and heals the sick…there is a lot of Jesus in him,” insists Geraldine Garcia, of Vancouver.