Projects from around the world

Madre de Amor Hospice

Tags: Sickness, Poverty
Thanks to the concept of palliative care, the process of dying, once a taboo subject for many, is now faced openly and with courage, as it deserves. Introduced in the early 1990s, hospice care has now extended far and wide. It revolves around the idea of providing attentive, personalized palliative care and comfort for those persons waiting out their death. In the Philippines, the idea has caught on. One example is the Madre de Amor Hospice launched in August 1994 in the province of Los Baños. It was named in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary under the invocation “Our Lady, Mother of Fair Love”.

The services offered respond to the full range of needs of a terminally ill patient – spiritual, psychological, social and emotional. Simply put, it is the scientific face of human compassion.

To date, the Madre de Amor Hospice has assisted 560 patients with terminal illness, as well as giving support to their families. At Madre de Amor, there is great consciousness of the volunteers’ role not only in assuaging present pain, but of calming anxiety over the future: fear of death and worry over those to be left behind. This is a legacy from its co-founder, Tony Mercado. Tony, deeply imbibed the spirit of the founder of Opus Dei, St. Josemaría, especially the latter’s zeal for souls, as it was expressed in no. 419 of The Way: “Children. The Sick. As you write these words, don’t you feel inclined to given them capitals? The reason is that in children and the sick, a soul in love sees Him.”

Tony’s principal aim in doing hospice care was to give the dying - if Catholic - the opportunity to receive the Last Sacraments, and to entrust those who were not Catholics by prayer to the infinite mercy of God, the Father of all. “We at hospice are witnesses to God’s mercy at work,” writes Monina Allarey Mercado, Tony’s widow. “Our patients are poor. They have humble homes and some of them live in hovels.”

In the years since Madre de Amor Hospice was set up, they have seen many conversions in the course of their volunteer work. Among these is the case of a person who used to perform abortions. She asked for hospice assistance because she was in pain, brought about by a cancer and by her conscience. She went to confession not once but three times of her own volition. She received the special absolution to lift the excommunication imposed on the sin of abortion. “Our hospice volunteer stayed beside her and prayed with her until she died. Dying persons are the best teachers of priorities”, adds Monina. “For the volunteers, the patient and his family, there opens a whole new avenue of courage, compassion and bonding. Hospice means healing – the healing of fears, resentments, loss of control, helplessness, loneliness and the vast uncertainty of hovering at the brink of death.”

At Madre de Amor, they are vowed to the concept of easing the pain of dying, and with Catholic patients the greatest importance is placed on the Sacraments as preparation to come face to face with God our Father. “Apostolate with the dying is like being midwife to a soul who is about to be born to eternal life,” Monina explains.

Open to all
At any one time since 1994, the volunteers have been taking care of 15 to 35 dying patients per month. “They are with us for a day, a week or a month, six months or even a year. Our patients are mostly in their fifties and sixties, a few are in their eighties and nineties. The number 1 cause of death is cancer,” says Monina.

Hospice service is given for free. This is possible through the generous donations of friends. Such financial help also supports the volunteers, nurses, office staff and utilities.

“We live on a shoestring budget and depend on kind hearts. Most people think of hospice as institutions with in-patient facilities. Madre de Amor’s hospice service is “home-based, for free and rendered at the grassroots level. One patient of ours lived in a shelter of packing crates and tin sheets, his bed was several layers of grocery cartons. When the time came to hear his final confession, the Chaplain knelt on the packed earth floor and bent down to the patient to listen to him, absolve him and give him Holy Communion.

Yet another patient, a man insecure of his social skills, used to be a hermit up in the hills. He had lived there for more than 30 years. When he fell ill, he sent word to his relatives to give him shelter. They took him in, cleaned him up, and fed him well. He was referred to our hospice. He had terminal kidney disease. When one of our volunteers offered to call a priest to hear his confession, he agreed. After several weeks, still under hospice care, he died.

One of our patients, on learning of her illness, returned to God after a lifetime of rejecting Him, and, under hospice care, received the Sacraments. In her final hours, she insisted on being taken to a nearby church. Just a few steps from her front door, she died in her wheelchair,” recounted Monina.

All these patients are attended to by a team of generous volunteers, mature men and women who have good spiritual grounding. They are retired professionals, mostly former teachers in the University of the Philippines in Los Baños. Several of them are PhD holders. Most importantly, they are Catholics who try to live by their faith. The volunteers are not required to be Catholic, but it is they who remain year after year. As one volunteer said: “Today my patient sees me. Tomorrow, he sees the face of Jesus.”

To the volunteers is entrusted the work of mercy to instruct and invite the patient to the Sacraments. Since its founding in 1994 to present, all the terminally ill Catholic patients have chosen to receive the Last Sacraments.


See further: www.hospice.org.ph