my speech during richie fernando exhibit launch

Good afternoon. Let me start with a story. One night, while Weyms, Shio, and myself, were having dinner with Fr. Provincial, ideas were popping out on how to celebrate the 10^th Death Anniversary of Richie Fernando. One original idea was a youth camp for the Socially Oriented Organizations in the Loyola Schools. I was so eager to spearhead the idea. While I was moving around the groups in Loyola Schools, trying to sell the idea, I was sadden to hear the question: “Bro, who is Richie Fernando?” Then I realized, indeed it has been ten years.

So we decided to start with this simple exhibit with the conviction to rekindle that spirit in which Richie echoed one October ten years ago. Let me share with you some thoughts about Richie…

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13)

On 17 October 1996, Filipino Jesuit Scholastic “Richie” Fernando laid down his life for his friends at the Jesuit Refugee Service’s school for disabled called Bataey Prieb (Center of the Dove), near Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A disturbed student was about to throw a hand grenade into a classroom of other students. Richie grabbed him from behind. The grenade fell of the ground and exploded. Richie was killed instantly, while everyone else survived.

Those students were truly Richie’s friends; he loved them and wished to dedicate his life to their service. Even the one who caused his death said of him, “Richie ate rice with me, we were friends.” The others, on wheelchairs and crutches, formed a guard of honor at his wake. Days later, as his body was being buried with his fellow Jesuits at Sacred Heart Novitiate, Novaliches, his friends in Cambodia solemnly carried an urn containing cloths soaked in his blood to a Buddhist burial mound sculpted by themselves.

The instant in which Richie grappled with the student rather than saving himself was his moment of truth; it revealed what was deepest within him. There was no time to think. He acted by instinct, an instinct honed by values learned in a loving family, by two years (1988-90) of coming to know himself better and Christ better in Arvisu House Jesuit Prenovitiate, by his vows and retreats as a Jesuit, by his response to his missionary call.

Thus, he could say it all in a letter written four days before his death, “I know where my heart is. It is with Jesus Christ, who gave his life for the poor, the sick, the orphan…”

The items from the exhibit are taken from the collections of the Fernando Family, Arvisu House, Sacred Heart Novitiate, Loyola House of Studies, collections of Fr. Jojo Magadia and Sch. Robbie Sian, pieced together here by the Juniors, Sch. Jason Dy, and myself. This exhibit will be displayed in the Loyola Schools, the High School, in Xavier Schoolx, and other possible areas until December. Having said all of these, without formalities, I welcome you to the opening of the Richie Fernando 10^th Death Anniversary Exhibit here in Loyola House of Studies.