The German theologian Karl Rahner once said that if he became pope, he would immediately make Sister Mary John a priest. To the detriment of the church, this never came to be. God had charted a vastly different path for the Benedictine nun—one that would take her out of the comforts of the convent to the streets with the poor and oppressed where, for her, Christ can truly be found.
Interviewing Sister Mary John was a daunting task. I sat across her in her St. Scholastica office, wide-eyed at her photo with Pope Francis, and badgered her with questions about the seemingly many contradictions in her life. It is atypical, after all, for a nun to be an activist who champions women and LGBT rights and actively speaks out against state abuses.
Taking the Veil
The young Guillermina Mananzan was an intellectual force to be reckoned with. Unsure at first, she entered the convent “just to try it,” expecting to lead the typical life of a religious sister: praying, teaching, and doing charitable acts.
At 19, she already had a degree in history education magna cum laude from St. Scholastica. She also studied missiology and systematic theology at the Wilhelms-Universität Münster in Germany before heading to Rome for her doctorate in linguistic philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University, where she became the first female summa cum laude graduate.
But unlike most academics, Sister Mary John knew that the most important education lies outside the classroom.
Mananzan returned to the Philippines from Rome in 1973 during the turbulent years of the Marcos-era Philippines where she and her religious sisters were thrown into disarray and forced to rethink their roles as servants of Christ in a society becoming more and more unjust.
At first, admittedly, she supported martial law, thinking that perhaps the country needed stern discipline to progress. Succeeding events, however, made Sister Mary John see the horrors of what a strongman rule truly meant.
Faith in Action
Her “baptism of fire” came one night in 1975 when she received a phone call from another nun asking her to join a workers’ protest at the La Tondeña distillery which eventually became the first large-scale strike during martial law. There she saw the military police beat workers merely calling for regularization and maternity leave rights—her first on a long list of run-ins with military brutality.
Energized from this experience, Sister Mary John went on to join more strikes. “Nakita ko doon ‘yung talagang solidarity ng workers. Doon ako namulat at nag-umpisa na ang aking pagiging political activist,” she recounted.
Mananzan vehemently rejected the notion that church people like her should not intervene in political affairs and should just instead focus on religious matters. In fact, she said, being a political activist is what truly gave her religious life meaning.
“Don’t ask me why I entered the convent!” she quipped. “Ask me why I stayed. And it’s because of the liberation movement. Mas nailalagay ko ‘yung life ko in danger kasi wala naman akong pamilya. ‘Yung pagiging madre ko makes me really more available for the movement for social transformation.”
Woman Unbound
Her participation in liberation movements eventually led her to the vanguards of the fight against the oppression of one of the most marginalized sectors in society and the Catholic hierarchy: the women. Hearing stories of incest and domestic violence against women in a conference in Venice in 1977 made her conscious of the hardships women face in society, which, she realized, transcended race, class, and religion.
Upon her return, Mananzan went on to establish several feminist organizations, including Filipina in 1981—the first self-avowed feminist organization in the country—and the more well-known General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action or Gabriela, which she co-founded in 1984 and chaired for 18 years.
Initially a broad coalition of advocacy groups led by upper-middle class women, Gabriela has since evolved into the radical feminist-activist organization it is today under the leadership of Sister Mary John. “Our feminism should always be in the context of social transformation. If you put feminism by itself, hanging in the air, it’s not going to do a lot of good,” she said.
Aside from her voluminous scholarship on feminist issues including works interrogating the “misogynies of the masculine Church,” her proudest accomplishments as a feminist leader include helping raise the masses’ awareness of women’s rights and advancing such laws as Republic Act 9710 or the Magna Carta of Women. But her fight is far from over.
An exasperated Mananzan lamented the Duterte government’s treatment of women, which, she said, is seemingly trying to erode all that they have gained in the past.
“This is not a good time for women because this is a very misogynistic administration. Itong presidente, walang respeto sa kababaihan. Bakit magkakaroon ng respeto ang mga lalaki, e kung ‘yung pinakamataas walang respeto,” she said, airing her frustrations about the current government’s utter disregard for human life and dignity that she described as “worse than Marcos.”
Sister Mary John recounted a letter she got from her mentor Karl Rahner when she asked for advice on whether she should support the armed rebellion against the Marcos regime. Quoting from memory, she said, with utmost certainty, that in times of great injustice, it is not only the right but the duty of the people to rebel.
“Although I use Marx, I use Gramsci, I use structural analysis of society, method lang ‘yon,” she said. Sister Mary John still thinks of herself as a mere follower of Christ, whom she found alongside the struggle to help set the oppressed free. ●
This article was first published on March 29, 2020.
