Falling in love and offering your commitment to another can happen in many ways. While some might consider these “other ways” unconventional, that is not to say that the love that was found is any less real and any less unbreakable.
By DENISE ROCO
What do you do when you know that the love of your life is someone you can never marry, never give you children, and will bring you closer to rags than to riches? For Marivic Sta. Ana, there was no other choice but to love Him until the very end.
“It’s a joke! That award is not for me. They made a mistake!” Those were the words then 11-year-old Maria Victoria “Marivic” Palomo Sta. Ana uttered when her classmates said she had won the “Most Religious” award.
In Marivic’s heart, she wondered how this could be when she was a naughty little girl who made the nuns at St. Mary Mazzarello School in Victorias City cry and get mad in frustration. But the joke was on her when she was indeed called on stage to receive the award. She was perplexed, but the reasons as to why she won that award became clearer soon enough.
If it was music to her ears that she would one day enter the convent, it was a maelstrom for her father Romeo Sta. Ana, a prolific entrepreneur who was eager to see his daughter enjoy any of the thriving agro-industrial businesses he had put up (sugar and industrial lime, a finance corporation and educational institution, which is Colegio de Sta. Ana de Victorias). But no, her fate was sealed. From then on, there was no future without Him.
“I just fell madly in love,” she says with her heart aflutter, “when you feel that you’ve been blessed with so much, how can you not give back? I can’t think of doing anything else but to give back. That feeling, I can’t explain it.” She may have not articulated much, but the glow on her face and the light in her eyes say it all. Now, even in her fifties, she is still on Cloud Nine, and ever too ecstatic about celebrating her another year as a nun of the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco.
Nun the richer
“God is my only love. I want to return God’s goodness by bringing His love and care to the poor and those in difficult circumstance,” gushes Sister Marivic during the interview.
If she had it her way, she would’ve already entered the Institute of the Daughters of Mary (also known as the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco), Help of Christians at age 15, after she topped the class again in her junior year at St. Theresita’s Academy in Silay City. No amount of begging, arguing, and tears made a dent on her father’s resolute “No.”
Marivic is the fifth in a brood of seven. Romeo Sta. Ana loved all his children and wanted to see them all happily settled in comfortable lives. Certainly, a man of his stature didn’t work so hard for any of his progeny, to have to ever come close to experiencing a hint of destitution. He shrugged it off as a silly idea planted into her head by the Catholic nuns, a phase she would certainly outgrow once she had a taste of hardship.
The haciendero from Victorias City, Negros Occidental firmly told Maria Victoria she was too young to leave home, and that she had to finish her studies first. Nonetheless, this did not hinder Marivic from leading the student council by her senior year in high school. She had the brains, the beauty and the wealth. She had everything. One can only imagine the line of suitors at her doorstep! All of whom Marivic turned down, and considered a distraction.
On a rebellious streak, she did not procure her documents for college. Her sister, in an attempt to dissuade and at the same time verify her vocation, enrolled Marivic at the Philippine Women’s University under a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work. Again, she graduated with no less than magna cum laude in 1983. The dean of the school offered her a scholarship for graduate study at the Catholic University of America. This was the one dilemma that ripped her in half. Still, the call was persistent so she declined.
Another obstacle was thrown at Marivic’s feet. The university prodded her to take the Social Work board exams with high hopes that she would top the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) board exams and bring honor to her alma mater. The shock of her life came when results showed she was only a board passer! Without support from the very school that forced her to take the exams, Marivic filed a lone complaint at the PRC to review her test results. Of all people, it was her father who remained beside her after almost a year of case hearings at the PRC. In conclusion, her field instruction papers were resolved with an erratum. Marivic scored fourth place in the 1983 Social Work Licensure Exams.
Dream come true
Finally, she entered the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, which works primarily for the integral Christian education of the marginalized youth. Inside the habit was a powerful activist to be reckoned with. In fact, her iconoclastic tendencies surfaced from the time she questioned her father about why there were children tending the carabaos and toiling in sugarcane fields when they should be studying. Such a sight already disturbed her when she was only in her elementary years.
As executive director of the Laura Vicuña Foundation (LVF) since its inception in 1990, Sister Marivic has forged strong ties with distinguished professionals in the field of business, commercial banking, law, as well as other religious sectors. “We take care of street children, most of whom are sexually abused or are exploited for labor, and help guide them to blossom into women who can fully function in society,†proudly states Sister Marivic.
She is the prime mover in the development of the Laura Vicuña Foundation’s holistic multi-staged program called Journey of Hope, along with innovative and action-oriented programs and services. Her focus now is the Child Protection Clinic on Wheels, which brings preventive and protective services against child abuse, exploitation and trafficking closer to high-risk urban poor communities. It currently aids nearly 2,000 children on average.
Her charismatic ways enabled key players from the cane field laborers to the sugar barons to assemble for a dialogue via the Children of the Canes National Conferences held twice in Bacolod and at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City. It was met with resistance at first and was confrontational between government and civil society, but eventually the talks flowed smoothly and the private sector along with the sugar barons agreed to continue the dialogue for as long as Sister Marivic convened.
It’s not only Sen. Miriam Santiago who eats death threats for breakfast. Sister Marivic shares the same meal as well. Being solace to many abused children, Sister Marivic receives the fiery end from the perpetrators. However, she remains unfazed.
Sister Marivic recently arrived from Mindoro after giving Counter Trafficking seminars in public schools. “God always takes care of me and my staff. He graced me with every blessing so I can save lives of the abused, exploited and trafficked persons. God is with me. I have nothing to fear,” she declares undauntedly.
Aside from being the international board member for Asia for Talitha Kum (International Network of Consecrated Life against Human Trafficking), Sister Marivic and her dynamic leadership has caused LVF to be granted the Maya Ajmera Sustainability award (worth $25,000) by the Global Fund for Children (USA) in 2011 and the 2012 STARS IMPACT award worth $100,000 in London. It was the first time a Philippine NGO was given such an award.
If there’s one pearl of wisdom this 2013 Outstanding Professional of the Year has imparted, it’s this: to have nothing is to gain everything, and that is a wealth beyond currency.
Photography by HAROLD TAPAN | Taken from PeopleAsia‘s
