‘Healing Priest’ had a massive global flock

A Filipino-Canadian priest who attracted thousands of followers worldwide with his “miraculous” healing ministry that courted controversy with the Catholic church, has died.

Father Fernando Suarez, known among Filipinos as a “healing priest,” collapsed while playing a tennis match at the posh Alabang Country Club on Feb.4 the opening day of the 11th National Priests’ Tennis Championship. He was to celebrate his 53rd birthday on Friday, Feb. 7.

Father Suarez, was a Filipino member of the Canada-based Companions of the Cross.

The priest's spokeswoman, Deedee Siytangco, said Father Suarez was playing in a tournament he himself organized for priests. He beat two priests earlier in the day in a pair of single-set matches. "[But in the] third game, he just collapsed," said Siytangco.

Father Suarez was recently in the news after he was cleared by the Vatican of accusations of sexually abusing minors.

The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared the priest "not guilty of the accusations made against him" last month.

Several dioceses in the Philippines had earlier barred the priest from celebrating Masses until he was cleared of the allegations.

Born in 1967 in the village of Butong in Taal town, Batangas province, the future priest went to Manila and graduated with a chemical engineering degree from Adamson University.

After college, he entered the Franciscan Order but left more than a year later. He joined the Society of the Divine Word but was asked to leave after six months.

Suarez was in his late 20s when he met a French-Canadian student who invited him to Canada, where he tried to join Winnipeg Diocese to study as a diocesan priest. He eventually left.

He then joined the Companions of the Cross, a Canadian congregation founded in the 1980s, and has stayed with them since. He was ordained in 2002.

Known globally as the “Healing Priest”, Father Fernando Suarez, founded the Mary Mother of the Poor charitable organization (www.marymotherofthepoor.org), a Canadian-registered non-profit society dedicated to alleviating poverty by providing food and other basic needs, as well as coordinating heath care and social services for youth.

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.

He was ordained in 2002 at age 35 in Ottawa, Canada.

Controversies came soon after he began his healing ministry, a gift he discovered when, as a 16 year old, he supposedly “cured” a paralyzed beggar outside a church in Manila.

Later, he often told the story of a woman in Canada who supposedly came back to life after he prayed over her.

“Tatanggalin na ang mga mata e... Nabuhay din,” he earlier told ABS-CBN News, saying “3 to 4” people had risen from the dead after he said a prayer for them throughout his ministry.

(Just as the eyes were about to be taken out, the dead came back to life.)

Word of Suarez’s gift spread quickly, attracting hundreds of believers desperate for cure in his healing masses.

Among them were powerful businessmen and politicians, who later became his friends and benefactors.

But Suarez’s growing popularity also attracted critics, who questioned his closeness with the rich and the powerful

As an organization, the powerful Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said it is respectful about Suarez’s claims of having healing powers, but some of its members are wary about his pursuits.

In an interview published in the Asian Pacific Post in 2015, Father Suarez said of the controversy; “I know myself and God knows who I am.”

“I know that all the criticisms and lies that have been published will help me become a better person, a better priest,” Suarez said.

In 2008, over 8,000 people — more than 2,000 per mass — attended the Father Suarez’s Metro Vancouver healing masses this month in Coquitlam, Richmond, Burnaby and Maple Ridge.

“One thing with father was he didn’t keep anything for himself,” said Siytangco recalling how he would even take off his tennis shirt and give it to a fellow priest who asked for it.

“These are priests who’d never played in Ayala Alabang. Their parish priest don’t take care of them. Their bishops don’t take care of them.”

Suarez’s friendship with rich people also allowed him to gather donations for those in need through his Missionaries of Mary Mother of the Poor foundation, she said.

But no controversy was perhaps more painful to the priest than the sex abuse case filed against him in 2014.

It took nearly 6 years before the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the priest had been “falsely accused.”

“A big redemption on my part,” he said in January.

“Kung alam mo lang what I went through,” he added and for which, Siytangco said, Suarez’s critics should pray for forgiveness. (If you only knew what I went through.)

A funeral service is scheduled for Feb 15.