Anything Under the Sun
Mill Hill Missionaries (1)
During the American regime at the turn of the century, the first Catholic foreign religious congregation to enter the Philippines was the St. Joseph's Missionary Society. Its members were then called padres josefinos after its name. However, at present, they are popularly called Mill Hill Missionaries (MHM).
The Call
They came to the Philippines upon the invitation of Apostolic Delegate to the Philippines Msgr. Ambrosius Agius who wrote on September 17, 1905 the society's Superior General Francis Henry explaining that:
"There is a very large field of labor here. Hundreds of parishes are vacant. The whole population is Catholic and entire provinces are at the mercy of Schismatics and of the Protestants, who work with zeal worthy of a better cause. It breaks my heart to see so many thousands of souls imploring for priests and dying without Sacraments."
On October 30, 1905, Bishop Frederick L. Rooker of Jaro followed up by describing the condition of his diocese to the superior general:
"I have an enormous Diocese here with nearly a million and a half of souls scattered in nearly 200 parishes over many islands. To care for them, I have the assistance of only 54 native priests of the Diocese. The Spanish Religious are aiding me all they can and in mission work I have thirty of them."
He continued: "But you can readily understand that 84 priests can do very little for a million and a half of souls and thousands and thousands of them are and have been for eight years practically abandoned."
Appealing, he continued: "It is a sad spectacle to see the fruit of three centuries of hard work and sacrifices - which fruit was the Catholicity of the native population of these Islands - disappearing for lack of priests. The work to my mind, is the most beautiful in the Church today. It is beautiful and important to work for the conversion of the new souls to the faith but it is more so to work lest the souls already redeemed should be lost."
Lastly, he candidly wrote that this was not an excursion: " I will not conceal the fact that they would have to face great difficulties and bear many terrible hardships. They could look only for extreme poverty and they would encounter the fierce race opposition... The language also for the time would present a serious difficulty, too... The priest must speak the native language. The work will be hard and trying, but the object is most glorious and the reward eternal."