THE PHILIPINES:The Philippines, an impoverished but devout society kept afloat by emigrant wages, reminds its Irish clergy of 1940s Ireland, writes Clifford Coonan
A US Air Force bomber was sent to bomb St Clement's church in Iloilo in the Philippines, shortly before the end of the second World War.
Military commanders believed the church would be used by Japanese occupying soldiers to defend their position and so it had to go.
The pilot flew in low but in the end he decided to drop the bomb on the field behind the house. A cow grazing in the field died, but the church was saved.
"We think he was a Catholic," chuckles Fr Flan Daffy, head of the retreat house at St Clement's, who has been in the Philippines for nearly 50 years. "He knew the jig was up for the Japanese."
There are five Irish and two Filipino Catholic priests in the church and retreat house at Iloilo, a medium-sized city in the collection of islands known as the Visayas, this large region which is famous as the place where the conquistador Ferdinand Magellan first landed to claim the archipelago for Spain.
Magellan landed near Cebu City, the largest city in the Visayas, about 40 minutes' flight from Iloilo to the east, and was killed on the beach at Mactan after the Lapu Lapu people decided they did not want to become Christians.
The Lapu Lapu's view became very much a minority one, and I was told to go and visit the Irish priests by a local official who works closely with the legions of nurses who go abroad to work each year. He himself had been married by one of the priests, and I should call and pay my respects, he insists.
The Church is important in these parts and secularism hasn't taken hold in the Philippines.
The Catholic Church's role is much like it used to be in Ireland, a central one.
The message on the 500-peso note from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo reads: "Faith in our people and faith in God," It is the only country in Asia where the Catholic Church dominates, brought by the Spanish in 1521 and still the religion of 90 per cent of the population.
The remaining 10 per cent include various Protestant denominations, 4.5 million Muslims in the southern islands of Mindinao and Sulu and a smattering of indigenous religions.
There is also a folk Catholicism which blends tribal beliefs with more traditional Catholic liturgy.
It's hot in this tropical city and upon arrival unannounced, at the retreat house in late afternoon, Fr Daffy is quick to suggest cold beer. "A drop of the craythur" is also generously offered. The Clareman himself drinks only tea.
"The surname originally means "obstreperous"," says Fr Daffy, who arrived by boat and has lived here for nearly 50 years. Speaking in an accent which has picked up many of the cadences of the numerous dialects of the region, which Fr Daffy speaks, he tells of how he sees many parallels between the Ireland in which he grew up in the 1940s, "where you never saw anyone without a patch on their trousers", and the Philippines of today.
Particularly when it comes to emigration.
"The poor people are all going abroad if they can. Their first priority is to educate the family and then it's like in Ireland, where they'd say: 'Don't forget the money to fix the slates'," he says.
The parallels are indeed striking. Filipinos working abroad send home €685 million a month to their families through the banking system and there are anything up to 10 million people out of a total population of 82 million working abroad.
Most of the seamen in the world these days come from the Philippines, most of the domestic help in Hong Kong and the Middle East, and the majority of the foreign nurses working in Ireland come from the Philippines.
At lunch in St Clement's the next day, Fr Daffy's fellow Redemptorists, Pat Sugrue from Kerry, Ivan Hurley from Limerick, Tom Groarke from Mayo and Bernard Casey, give me a warm welcome. They are all more at home here now than when they go back to Ireland.
The Philippines is a remarkable country, rich in natural resources, with some of the greatest people in the world - warm, well-educated, loyal and fun.
And yet it is a desperately poor, dreadfully mismanaged and corrupt land, largely run by 60 families. It should be one of the richest countries in the world - instead, it is one of the poorest.
"There have been great changes and there have been miserable changes. Marcos was an awful curse. The country was coming on well but he removed everybody. He was a huge catastrophe," says Fr Daffy.
During the 50 years that Fr Daffy has lived here, the event that seems to have stayed with him most was the government of Ferdinand Marcos, who became president in 1965 and introduced martial law in 1972, largely as a pretext to run the country as his own personal fiefdom, with his free-spending wife Imelda Marcos at this side, until Cory Aquino came to power on the back of People Power in 1986.
Her rise to power came after the assassination of her husband Ninoy Aquino at the Manila airport in 1983 that now bears his name.But she spent her presidency fighting off seven coup attempts and failing to gain control over the interests which rule the Philippines - the 60 large families and the army.
While Marcos undoubtedly secreted billions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and crucified his political opponents and the peasantry alike, his successors have all been prone to cronyism and corruption.
Former president Joe Estrada, known as Erap which is a play on the word for "buddy" or "mate", appears to be planning a political comeback right now. Estrada, who won the election on a pro-poor platform, had not been formally convicted of corruption and accepting huge gambling payoffs when he was impeached and removed from power by a middle-class revolt, which left a sour taste with many of the disenfranchised poor in the Philippines.
He was succeeded by his vice-president, the current president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who has also spent her time fighting coup attempts on a regular basis and has done little to change the culture of graft and privilege that surrounds the ruling elite in the Philippines.
She has to step down in 2010, according to the constitution, so it remains to be seen whether anyone succeeding her can do anything to introduce real, meaningful change in the Philippines.
The priests at Iloilo have seen a lot of changes in the Philippines over the years, and their optimism for the future of the country is rooted in the positivity of the local people.
"These are great people for helping each other. I've never felt afraid in the Philippines, not even under Marcos," says Fr Daffy. Despite the name, not quite what you'd call obstreperous.