Holy Melee

Canadian priest who has made an international name for himself as a faith healer has quit Canada for his native Philippines amid a rising tide of controversy surrounding the nature of his miraculous powers.

From humble beginnings in the southern Philippines, former Toronto-based priest Father Fernando Suarez, whose four Metro Vancouver healing Masses earlier this year attracted over 10,000 zealous devotees, has returned to his home province of Batangas.

His priestly faculties — or his right to say the Roman Catholic Mass — have been indefinitely suspended in Toronto.

In The Philippines, Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz has recently banned Suarez from the expansive archdiocese Cruz oversees north of Manila, while another high-ranking bishop is just now moving for the Canadian priest’s expulsion from his Philippine diocese.

Meanwhile, the island nation’s powerful Catholic Bishops’ Conference of The Philippines has vowed to keep "watch" over the activities of the rogue priest who professes to erase tumours and raise the dead.

Archbishop Cruz, former president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of The Philippines, said healing masses are "open to abuses, like superstition, hysteria, fanaticism, and money."

"It is too much to say that Fr. Suarez resurrects the dead," he said.

And still, Father Fernando Suarez’ sphere of influence widens as word of his "healing powers" spreads, largely through the Internet, where testimonials from the cured share space with solicitations for donations in exchange for pebbles and pearls purportedly possessing healing powers.

His Canadian-based charitable foundation has expanded into an organization with deep political reach and vast wealth. While the faithful flock in their thousands to Suarez’ healing masses in North America, in The Philippines entire cities come to a standstill when he arrives to lay hands on the poor and the ailing.

Ordained in Canada only six years ago, Suarez has returned home to take command of a religious empire that is sending ripples of fear and apprehension through the rank and file of the conservative Roman Catholic Church.

In Batangas, high above the China Sea, the charismatic young priest is erecting his mountaintop "mega-shrine" to the Virgin Mary, including a 33-storey Marian sculpture of stainless steel that will be taller than the Statue of Liberty upon completion in 2012.

The three-day consecration vigil for the 20-hectare site at Monte Maria — which will also boast a Rosary Garden, several chapels, retreat houses, an international centre for the poor, campsites for pilgrims, a conference centre, and gift shops — attracted over 100,000 pilgrims who, despite heavy rains and flash floods, hiked seven kilometres and lined up overnight just to cast eyes on the "miracle priest from Canada."

The Oratory of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Monte Maria is the work of Suarez’ Canada-based foundation, Mary Mother of the Poor, which he founded in 1996, well before becoming a priest.

Canadian Filipinos and wealthy Philippines-based benefactors, including one anonymous congressman who donated the bulk of the land, have funded the extraordinary project.

Monte Maria beach pebbles and rosary-bead bracelets crafted from local pearl — both reputedly imbued with healing properties — are sold worldwide for $10 or more to help fund what Suarez himself describes as "a Disneyland with a spiritual side."

Rich and poor, they give because they believe in a man whose various claims include instantly healing spinal cord injuries, reversing deafness, erasing speech impediments, eradicating cancer, and even reviving an Ottawa woman declared dead by doctors eight hours earlier . . . all by simply laying his hands upon the sick amid prayers and chants of "Praise Jesus!"

Suarez’ popularity continues to grow amongst the Filipino Diaspora globally, with thousands turning out for his healing masses in North America and throughout Asia.

In his homeland, a typical healing mass in an urban centre now necessitates school and office closures as crowds of 70,000 or more take to the streets for Fr. Fernando Suarez.

Suarez, 40, is a member of the recently established Canada-based Companions of the Cross, an international order (like the Franciscans or Jesuits) "called to the ongoing renewal of the Church through a dynamic evangelization."

Still "a priest in good standing with priestly faculties from the Archdiocese of Ottawa," where Companions of the Cross is based, Suarez was earlier asked to leave the Franciscan Order, the Society of the Divine Word and the Diocese of Winnipeg, which were all reportedly uncomfortable with Suarez’ nascent powers of healing.

His expulsion from the Toronto Archdiocese, where Suarez was an associate priest at St. Timothy’s in North York in 2002 and 2003, came as a shock to the fervently Catholic Filipino community in Canada, and The Philippines.

Suarez was banned from conducting Mass in Toronto — and the Philippine diocese — for a breach of a directive in the Instructions on Prayers for the Healing issued in 2000 by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, specifically Article 4, Number 3, of the Disciplinary Norms contained in the Instruction on Prayers for Healing.

This particular directive states that permission to hold healing masses must be explicitly given by the Diocesan Bishop.

The same instructions state that "anything resembling hysteria, artificiality, theatricality or sensationalism" must not take place.

Bill Steinburg, communications manager with the Office of the Archbishop in Toronto, says Suarez priestly faculties were actually "canceled" in 2005 by former Archbishop Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic.

"At the time that action was taken in relation to the obedience to the ordinary (Archbishop)," Steinburg told the Asian Pacific Post.

"I can’t tell you what the circumstances were . . . (but) he hasn’t permission to say mass in our jurisdiction."

Steinburg further explained that Suarez is an order priest with the Companions of the Cross.

"The Companions of the Cross have an international hierarchy of their own and when an order priest is servicing in the Archdiocese, he does so with the permission of the Archbishop. There is an order in place."