(a)The CICM missionary as martyr: the example of Ferdinand Hamer and others One of the

brightest examples of the first kind of heroism is given by the late bishop Ferdinand Hamer, a
Dutchman who belonged to the pioneering team of CICM in Chinese Mongolia. As a young priest
of the diocese of Utrecht (The Netherlands), Hamer had joined the Belgian Fathers in 1864, when
he started his novitiate; he was accepted as a member of the congregation in July 1865, shortly
before the first journey to China. CICM founder Theophile Verbist had a very good impression of
Ferdinand Hamer, who was only twenty-five when they left for China, while Verbist himself was
forty-two; “F. Hamer, who is by far the youngest member at the age of twenty-five is quick in
learning Chinese and he also adapts easily to the life in China. His wish is to become a Chine se
amongst the Chinese as soon as possible.” Father Verbist further mentions that “F. Hamer is
invaluable to the mission” and that he is a model of missionary perfection: “Our Lord granted us a
perfect missionary. The Christians love him as they love a father; he lives entirely for them.”
When he came back in 1891 from a vacation in Europe, he had a lot of gifts with him. However,
even as he “thought of building churches and chapels, (…) he prefers to spend this money on
emergency aid”, after learning about robberies and famine that hit his mission. The most striking
anecdote about F. Hamer is about the end of his life, when he already was vicar-apostolic of the
Ortos region (South-Western Mongolia). In the 1890’s, bishop Hamer had repeatedly requested
to be relieved from his duties, since he found the terms and conditions of his function – especially
the sharing of responsibilities with the CICM superior general - rather taxing. After all, he had
been in the mission since 1865! However, at the end of the decade, a so-called ‘palace
revolution’ in Pei-ching re-kindled hatred against the Christians. It was the start of the so -called
‘Boxer Revolution’. They were not afraid (even before the time of modern social media!) to
fabricate and spread false rumors about the Christians and their foreign missionaries. In Eastern
Mongolia, Father Joseph Segers was captured and buried alive. The mission of Sung -chu-tsui-tzu
was saved thanks to a Russian military battalion; Xiwanze (Si-wan-tse) in Central Mongolia,
thanks to the presence of a Belgian commander who had ordered to build fortifications. Bishop
Hamer had just relocated his residence to a place called Erh-shih-szu-ch’ing-ti, in the Eastern
part of his vicariate, when the Boxers struck. Being advised by the Mongolian prince of Djüngar to
move West to a fortified residence for his security, he told his priests: “I cannot expose you to
such a great danger and a certain death. If there is a way to save you all, then I have to do this. I
cannot bring the mission of whom I am the head, in danger of losing all its priests. The only
solution is a hasty retreat. I therefore order you to leave for San-cheng-kung tonight. As I am an
old man, I shall stay with the Christians. So, if God wants my life, I shall offer it to him gla dly in
order to save my Christians and my good missionaries. May God accept my sacrifice and save
you all.” After the missionaries, forced to heed the words of the bishop due to their vow of
obedience, had left, the bishop, with a thousand Christians and catechumens took refuge in the
church. After having fended off the first attacks, they were convinced by military mandarins that
the danger was gone, just to find out that this advice was a hoax. In the attack that followed all
children of the Holy Childhood were killed, while women were sold as slaves. The bishop was
found kneeling in his chapel, brought away and subject to public humiliation and horrific torture.
He was eventually set alight, while his corpse was afterwards beheaded and desecrated. His six
missionaries had to cross the Ortos and Gobi deserts to Outer-Mongolia in difficult and
dangerous conditions, and then, together with nine confreres, travel all the way through Siberia to
Europe; fortunately they got a warm welcome upon arriving in Scheut! Even in the Philippines,
some CICM missionaries have paid their service to the Lord with their lives. This was particularly
the case at the end of World War II, when five of them were killed in separate incidents, that took
place in Baguio City, in Nueva Vizcaya and Isabela provinces. Among them was former SLU
“founder” Father Seraphin Devesse. Father Conrado Aquino was hit by a bullet in Tinglayan
(Kalinga province), while on his way to Baguio City. Fr. Elias Bareng died while being caught in
the crossfire of warring tribes in Tanudan, Kalinga, in 1979. Father Leonard Vande Winkel
disappeared in 1988, in Lubuagan, also located in Kalinga. He had received death threats after
openly criticizing an armed group guided by an ideology he believed to be against the teachings
of the Gospel. Among the Filipino CICM missionaries assigned in foreign missions, Father
Conrado dela Cruz went missing in Guatemala in 1980, while still other CICM confreres were
either killed, disappeared, or were forced to leave the country. Father Pacificador Laranang
drowned under rather suspicious circumstances along Guatemala’s Pacific coast in 1984.
Martyrdom is not just something of the remote past but can occur in recent times as well. (b)The
CICM missionary as church leader: Bishop Wenceslao Padilla, Bishop William Brasseur, and
others Not all CICM ‘heroes’ were martyrs. We have already encountered the example of bishop
Wenceslao Padilla (Ulaan-Baatar, 2002-2018). Let’s refresh our memory: The mission in
Mongolia started on July 10, 1992, when three CICM confreres, the Reverend Fathers Robert
Goessens, Wenceslao Padilla, and Gilbert Sales (SLU President since 2015) - arrived in that
North Asian country, after pope John Paul II, through the Propaganda Fide, had sent them to
establish the Catholic Church community there. Evangelization in Mongolia almost had to start
from zero. The pioneers’ position was not totally unlike that of the CICM founder, Father
Théophile Verbist, who could only rely on a very elementary church structure when they arrived in
the vast Chinese part of Mongolia in 1865, dedicating themselves to the conversion of the
infidels, the preaching of the faith to the Chinese and the salvation of the many abandoned
infants. The CICM missionaries of 1992 also had to adjust to the harsh climate, the scarce and
different food; they had to learn something of the different language of the locals, as they were
dealing with non-Christian religious conservatism as well as indifference among the locals. As
Christian missionaries, they also had to deal with the sometimes “aggressive” missionary
methods of their non-Catholic counterparts. Even as progress was very slow in the beginning of
the 1992 missionary drive, bishop ‘Wens’ and his team managed to baptize several hundreds of
Mongolians “without proselytizing”, “come and see” being their main slogan. Bishop ‘Wens’
described his sentiments as follows: “I didn’t mind the difficulties: extremely harsh winters;
language barrier; lack of material comforts; strong religious affiliations of the people to Buddhism,
Shamanism, and Islam; the presence of other Christian denominations and sects; and the
absence of Church structures and local Catholic believers. I took all of these as positive
ingredients of mission life. I had a very strong conviction that the God who called had already
been present in the ordinary lives of the Mongolian brothers and sisters even before we arrived.
Thus, I just had to grow in spirituality, so I would understand the beliefs and practices of the
prevailing religions, and in wisdom, in order to learn more about the country and its people.”
Father ‘Wens’ knew that – today more than ever – missionary work is a complex and difficult task,
that requires huge amounts of patience, tactful communication, and well-considered, selective
use of local cultural elements to make the Christian message better understood and appreciated
by the population. He particularly heeded the CICM pledge to engage in Inter-religious dialogue.
The CICM Constitutions declare: “We sincerely love and respect the people to whom we are sent.
We adopt a listening attitude and try to gain knowledge and understanding of their socio -
economic, political, cultural and religious realities. Aware that the Spirit has been at work
everywhere, we discern the evangelical values present in these realities.” Other examples of
CICM leadership include Bishops Constant Jurgens (Tuguegarao), Albert Van Overbeke
(Bayombong), Carlito Cenzon (Baguio), Prudencio Andaya (Tabuk); special attention befits the
person of Bishop William (Willy) Brasseur: Having arrived in the Philippines from Belgium in
1931, this missionary became rector of the Baguio cathedral in 1945, Baguio had become an
apostolic prefecture in 1933, with Father Oktaaf Vandewalle as Prefect Apostolic; in 1935, Father
Joseph Billiet took his place, until after World War II. Father Brasseur became CICM-provincial
superior in 1946. In 1948, he was promoted to the function of bishop, as vicar apostolic of the
Mountain Province(s). The timing suggests that he had a tremendous task to rebuild churches,
chapels, convents, schools, dispensaries, dormitories, etc., that had been badly damaged or
destroyed during World-War II. However, re-building the old was coupled with launching the new.
At least a couple of dozens of new mission stations were opened during the leadership period of
bishop Brasseur. He was also the one who used new communication media in disseminating the
good message of Christ; The Mountain Province Broadcasting Company was started in 1965 -66.
Most of all, however. Bishop Brasseur is remembered for being the founder of the Servants of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary (S.I.H.M., commonly known in the Cordillera as the ‘Tuding sisters’) in
1952. Addressing the General Chapter in 1975, the bishop declared: “Both these aspirations of
these young girls and the need for religious sisters to evangelize especially the women and
children, urged me to start an exclusive diocesan congregation, where only candidates [who are]
natives of the Mountain Province, or young girls who have spent most of their youth in the
Vicariate and are acquainted with the culture of the people of this Vicariate would be admitted”.
Among the tasks of the sisters figure aspects of the typical missionary’s apostolate: “catechetical
work, education in the schools, social education, health improvement”. Referring to himself, the
bishop still pledges support for the sisters, both in their preparation and training, and as they
carry out their tasks: “The ordinary of the place will remain always very close to this institute,
ready to help them not only morally and even spiritually, but also in case of need financially.” The
bishop is presented as the leader who creates an organization with its leaders, to help him in
leading his flock… Team work is a value that is not only cherished by CICM members, but also
shared by them with other groups in the Church. Bishop Brasseur retired in 1981, and was
succeeded by Rev. Emiliano Madangeng. (c)The CICM missionary as anthropologist: the
example of Morice (‘Maurice’) Vanoverbergh and others Missionaries ‘ad extra’ go out from their
home country and culture to proclaim the good news of Christ to foreign peoples. Doing so
effectively requires a serious effort of immersion, so as to perfectly assess the culture of
communication in a certain place including the local language(s). Therefore, CICM missionaries
already have shown interest in local dialects and cultures at an early stage. Referring to Father
Alphons Bermyn, who became Provincial Superior of South-West Mongolia in 1890 and Vicar
Apostolic of Ortos in 1901, Father Verhelst states: “For quite a long time, A. Bermyn has been
compiling a Mongolian-French, French-Mongolian dictionary of the spoken language. It is aimed
at the young members of the Congregation who will need to speak the language. He had based
his work on the dictionary of the Russian Jozef Szezepan Kowalewski, who brought together the
words of the written language. A. Bermyn adds the spoken words and many expressions which
he had heard from the Mongols. The dictionary contains 11,000 words with all their meanings,
and also examples. He wishes to provisionally make fifty copies, because he wants to complete it
before publishing it.” In the Philippine context, the person of Father Morice Vanoverbergh (1885-
1982) deserves attention. The eldest of seven children, Father Morice took his first vows in the
CICM in 1904; he arrived from his native Belgium in the Philippines on October 24, 1909. He was
first assigned in the mission of Bauko, in the Mountain Province, a mission station founded by
CICM pioneer Father Jules Sepulchre, with a boys’ dormitory and a small school. Father Morice
was found of collecting plants; for this reason, his superior had recommended him to the Bureau
of Science in Manila. His next assignment was in Tubao, La Union. When Father Jules Sepulchre
prematurely died, Father Morice went back to Bauko to attend the funeral, However, the people
wanted him to stay. Once upon a time, while touring provincial Superior Fr. Henry Raeymakers
around, they passed a place called Guinsadan, where CICM was meditating on starting up a
mission station. The Provincial was a notoriously tall man, riding an Australian horse. Fr. Morice
tells the following story about their visit: “When we arrived there, all the people came out to look.
Probably they had never seen an Australian horse and, in addition, a big man with a long beard.
The Provincial commented, “it is quite obvious that they did not yet often see a missionary here”!
The next assignment of Fr. Morice was in Bangar, La Union. When the Filipino Resident
Commissioner in Washington was visiting Vigan, he learned about the presence of Fr. Morice in
Bangar, and decided to see him, since he was very interested in orchids. Because of their bad
experiences with the Spanish friars, the local population was initially very suspicious towards Fr.
Morice, but that changed after the commissioner’s visit: he spent more than one hour in the
rectory of Fr. Morice, but hardly paid attention to the local officials. It significantly boosted the
prestige of Fr. Morice and triggered a lot of respect for him in the community. The next mission
station of Fr. Morice was in Tagudin, Ilocos Sur. There, a team of ICM sisters were looking after
the school. In order to raise money for the schools, the sisters were selling lace, made by the
girls whom they had trained. In order to boost sales and income, Father Morice went to peddle
lace in major cities across the United States, until he found a broker through the Consul of
Switzerland, and he was called back to the Philippines for a mission in Apayao province. This
was a particularly challenging assignment for him, as his superior obviously wasn’t very much
aware of the situation on the field. He wrote: “I was assigned to found the Apayao mission, but I
was supposed to reside in Lubuagan [Kalinga]. The Provincial told me that I should go to
Lubuagan every month. This would have meant six days on horseback to go to Apayao and again
six days to return to Lubuagan. I was thus supposed to do practically nothing else but to trail
along the road. This was indeed some kind of assignment!” The Apayao territory of those times
also comprised parts of Cagayan province, and had a total surface area of 2,000 square miles.
For such surface, they were exactly two (2) CICM missionaries. He usually was accompanied by
a catechist while travelling, also for safety reasons: “Those trips were very perilous since we had
continually to cross rivers. In order to reach Dagadan, we had to cross the river fifty -nine times in
one morning. The river was, in fact, the road, and every time the river touched a mountain, we
had to try to reach the other bank. Sometimes the river was deep and few people were living in
that region. It was, therefore, necessary always to have a companion. We could have drowned,
and nobody would have known it.” It was during this time that Fr. Vanoverbergh was
recommended to do research on the Negritoes (Called ‘Agta’ or ‘Eta’) of Northern and Eastern
Luzon. Witty as always, Fr. Morice jokingly said: “I never had opened a book on anthropology,
and I did not know what kind of report I had to make”. In spite of this, his findings on the tribal
religious beliefs and practices brought him praise from nobody less than pope Pius XI ! Also
around that time, in 1928 or 1929, the wooden church of Kabugao was built, as well as
dormitories to accommodate students for the nearby public school. During World War II, Fr.
Vanoverbergh was assigned in Sabangan, Mountain Province. That’s where he built a chur ch
again – for an amount of five to six thousand pesos. When the Japanese imperial troops entered
the village, Fr. Morice had told them not to flee, since this would likely have lead to all houses
being burned to the ground.. Instead, he went to greet the Japanese commander and showed him
his passport that displayed stamps of four visits to Japan. The officer was satisfied and no
violence was committed. The pragmatic approach of Fr. Morice apparently had worked. Most
damage occurred during the American bombardments at the end of the war. They got weekly
bombings for nearly three months. The people had to flee and Fr. Morice, who was working on an
Iloko grammar, lost a part of his manuscript. After the war, he was again assigned to Bauko,
where a new church and convent were put up. Towards the end of his life, he retired in Home
Sweet Home, Baguio City, “to help those who are doing nothing” as he wittingly said. Although
nearly blind, he was still able to finish his Isneg dictionary in 1972, and an English -Kankanay
thesaurus in 1981, the year before his death. Fr. André De Bleeker, CICM, writes that
Vanoverbergh first did not like to publish any such thing as a book or dictionary, saying “Who
among the CICM’s is ever publishing books? That is not our custom!” However, he eventually
gave in to go ahead with the preparation of a book after discovering that a government -published
Kankanna-ey grammar by an American lady contained obvious errors. His body was brought
back to Bauko where a monument was put up in his memor(d)The CICM missionary as healer:
the example of Father Joseph Rutten and others, until the SLU-HSH

We may conclude from the story of Father Morice Vanoverbergh, that not all CICM heroes were
‘martyrs’ in the strict sense, but that all have excelled in dedication to their work as missionaries,
and in love for God and for His people. This is also what has been the basic motivation for
attempts to find a solution for exanthematic typhus, an illness caused by a bacterium (Rickettsia
Prowozeki) passed on to humans by lice or ticks. The illness is sometimes confounded with
typhoid fever, a contagious bacterial disease (Salmonella typhi) causing primarily gastro -intestinal
symptoms. What was at stake was obvious: at least 72 CICM members had probably die d from
typhus in China between 1910 and 1930 alone. In 1868, the CICM founder, Father Theophile
Verbist, had already been a possible victim of the same disease – or of typhoid fever, as some
are reporting -, after barely twenty-seven months in his Mongolian mission. His case was not an
exception, since several foreign missionaries had died of any such disease in the area, including
Father Alois Van Segvelt, who died on April 5, 1867, and by whose death the founder had been
heavily affected. Father Nestor Pycke, CICM, reports the following:
He (Theophile Verbist) had decided to undertake a pastoral visit to all mission stations of his
vicariate, before going back to Europe “to give the final orientation to our novitiate in Scheut”. He
left Xiwanzi on February 3, 1868. Three weeks later, on February 23, on a Sunday, he dies of
typhoid in Laohugou, the Valley of the Tigers, in the district of Jehol. Matthieu Zhang, the Chinese
priest who was preaching a mission in a small village thirty miles away from Laohugo u,
administered him the sacrament of the sick. Theophile Verbist was forty-four years old. Feeling
seriously sick, Th. Verbist had sent a courier to Kulitu, eighty miles away, to request the two
confreres who resided there, to come and help him. Hamer was preaching a mission in a remote
village. His assistant van Avezaath left them immediately for Laohugou, but he arrived too late.
They buried him in a tomb before the altar in the chapel of the village. (…) The founder had been
imprudent: when climbing a mountain to go to Laohugou, he removed his skin clothes and walked
all the way on foot. Afterwards, he went back to his place in the carriage, but he failed to put on
his warm skin clothes, while he was perspiring. In the evening, he had high temperature.”

“Exanthematic typhus” is a term that doesn’t appear in the letters of missionaries in 1868;
however, in 1930, CICM superior general Joseph Rutten mobilized an international team of
experts to find a remedy against the disease. In February 1931, he arrived in the vcariate of
Xiwanzi (or ‘Hsi-wan-tzu’), accompanied by a Hungarian doctor, Stefan Gajdos, to vaccinate the
missionaries against exanthematic typhus. After visiting pope Pius XI in Rome, the superior
general had gone to Poland to contact the vaccine developer, Dr. Rudolph Weigl. Fathers
Verhelst and Pycke describe the continuation as follows:

In 1931, J. Rutten, together with his ex-student from Nan-hao-ch’ien, Dr. Joseph Chang, starts a
laboratory for the preparation of the vaccine in the Catholic University of Fu-jen. This university
was founded in 1927 in Pei-ching (renamed Pei-p’ing by the Nan-ching government). This
vaccine means the end of the deadly outcome of typhus, but not of the illness itself, which will still
plague the missionaries.
The CICM had, still under the leadership of Joseph Rutten, put up their own hospital in Kuei -hua-
ch’eng (‘City of the Return of Civilization’, also known as ‘the Blue City’). A Belgian medical
doctor and a French nurse started working in a dispensary in 1921. In 1923-24, a General
Catholic Hospital was built under the supervision of Father Leo Vendelmans, who was among
others also the architect of the Baguio Cathedral in the Philippines. Besides the 100 -beds
hospital, the terrain also accommodated houses for doctors and for the director, and buildings for
student-nurses as well as for the ‘Belgian sisters’ (officially called ‘Missionary canonesses of St.
Augustine’, in the early 1960’s re-baptized as ‘ICM sisters’ or ‘Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary’). The European doctors were gradually replaced by Chinese doctors. The hospital’s
administration was transferred in the 1930’s to the Chinese province of Sui -yüan. When the CICM
received compensation money for the sufferings endured during the so-called ‘Boxer-rebellion’ –
during which several confreres died as martyrs- China and Belgium agreed to use the money
exclusively for infrastructural, educational and charitable projects in China, including for the
hospital. In 1943, the Belgian sisters were replaced by native sisters, but were recalled a few
years later, until the revolution broke out. The last CICM missionaries – including an
ophthalmologist-internist doctor – were relieved from their hospital functions in 1953.

When the CICM missionary pioneers came to the Philippines in 1907, most of the country had
already been Christianized. In spite of this, the ‘missionary instinct’ of combining preaching with
caring did play a role as missionary practice, especially in remote areas. One of the pioneers wh o
is said to have “integrated medical aid for the people among his apostolic methods” is Rev.
Father Oktaaf Vandewalle. He made sure that there was in every town or barrio a local leader
who would inform him if any urgent matter had to be addressed, like somebody who got seriously
sick. He is also said to have cured the sister of an Aglipayan leader in Solano while he was
staying at Bayombong!

In the city of Baguio, the CICM had started college-level courses in 1952, that developed into
Saint Louis University in 1963. Initially, the university offered health science-courses in her
College (now called ‘school’) of Natural Sciences. In 1971, the clinical laboratories and charity
clinic – that were named after First Lady Imelda R. Marcos - had become a reality, providing free
or affordable check-ups, laboratory tests, and medicines to the population of deprived areas. As
early as 1973, the SLU clinical laboratories had made agreements with five rural medical centers,
through the mediation of concerned local CICM parish priests, to carry out laboratory analyses.
The centers were in Banaue and Kiangan (Ifugao), Salegseg (Kalinga-Apayao), Natonin (Mt.
Province), and Sinipsip (Abatan, Benguet).

The SLU Blood Bank and the X-ray laboratory were the next steps in the expansion of
paramedical research and services. The MOMFI medical outreach missions were also thriving in
that period. However, the SLU dedication to science and public health culminated with the
opening of a School of Medicine and Hospital of the Sacred Heart (1976 and 1977). At the SLU-
Hospital of the Sacred Heart, a double target has always been aimed at: the hospital constitutes
a significant addition to the city’s public health infrastructure, while it also caters to the ‘hands on’
and practical training of medical and nursing students. During School Year 1975-76, one of the
research projects of the SLU Research and Development Office – that had been erected just in
1974 – was a “Project Study on a School of Medicine and Teaching Hospital in SLU” .

Putting up a hospital and operating such facility in a sustainable way isn’t something obvious for a
relatively small religious congregation that ran a young university in a developing country, outside
the capital city, without significant government support or financing. Still, the CICM fathers and
their aides in Saint Louis University dreamt of it and made the moves that were necessary to find
external funding for the huge project. It is no surprise that the SLU administration referred to the
socio-economic situation in the region and the country to support its request for foreign
assistance.

The CICM-identity of the hospital should be reflected in the ‘human touch’ (or is it a ‘divine
touch’?) of the health care it continues to offer, in the respectful way in which it receives patients
as goal in themselves and images of Jesus-Christ, the Incarnate Word to Which the CICM was
dedicated.

As we are returning to the CICM and to her founder, Father Theophile Verbist, the words from the
founder in a letter to his confreres in Scheut – in which he was referring to political developments
both in his native country and in that of his mission - acquires an ominous sound in the light of the
current global Covid-19 health crisis:

“Farewell, my dear friend, take well care of yourselves and give us a lot of news. Europe is really
sick, but China hasn’t healed. What will happen to the world? Let’s hurry to accumulate some
merits, since the end [of life] could be near”. [T. Verbist, Letter 394 – To J. Bax & T. Rutjes]

Sickness and health have always been a part of the missionaries’ lives, as they have tried at all
times to prevent illness, to mitigate, or to eliminate it. Missionaries aren’t afraid to face illness and
put up efforts to overcome it, since they count on the unfailing help of God’s healing Providence:
“I don’t easily give up and get away from hardships. The more trials the better!” [W. Padilla,
bishop of Ulaan-Baatar 2002-2018]y.

(d)The CICM missionary as healer: the example of Father Joseph Rutten and others, until the SLU-HSH

We may conclude from the story of Father Morice Vanoverbergh, that not all CICM heroes were
‘martyrs’ in the strict sense, but that all have excelled in dedication to their work as missionaries, and in
love for God and for His people. This is also what has been the basic motivation for attempts to find a
solution for exanthematic typhus, an illness caused by a bacterium (Rickettsia Prowozeki) passed on to
humans by lice or ticks. The illness is sometimes confounded with typhoid fever, a contagious bacterial
disease (Salmonella typhi) causing primarily gastro-intestinal symptoms. What was at stake was obvious:
at least 72 CICM members had probably died from typhus in China between 1910 and 1930 alone. In
1868, the CICM founder, Father Theophile Verbist, had already been a possible victim of the same
disease – or of typhoid fever, as some are reporting -, after barely twenty-seven months in his
Mongolian mission. His case was not an exception, since several foreign missionaries had died of any
such disease in the area, including Father Alois Van Segvelt, who died on April 5, 1867, and by whose
death the founder had been heavily affected. Father Nestor Pycke, CICM, reports the following:

He (Theophile Verbist) had decided to undertake a pastoral visit to all mission stations of his vicariate,
before going back to Europe “to give the final orientation to our novitiate in Scheut”. He left Xiwanzi on
February 3, 1868. Three weeks later, on February 23, on a Sunday, he dies of typhoid in Laohugou, the
Valley of the Tigers, in the district of Jehol. Matthieu Zhang, the Chinese priest who was preaching a
mission in a small village thirty miles away from Laohugou, administered him the sacrament of the sick.
Theophile Verbist was forty-four years old. Feeling seriously sick, Th. Verbist had sent a courier to Kulitu,
eighty miles away, to request the two confreres who resided there, to come and help him. Hamer was
preaching a mission in a remote village. His assistant van Avezaath left them immediately for Laohugou,
but he arrived too late. They buried him in a tomb before the altar in the chapel of the village. (…) The
founder had been imprudent: when climbing a mountain to go to Laohugou, he removed his skin clothes
and walked all the way on foot. Afterwards, he went back to his place in the carriage, but he failed to
put on his warm skin clothes, while he was perspiring. In the evening, he had high temperature.”

“Exanthematic typhus” is a term that doesn’t appear in the letters of missionaries in 1868; however, in
1930, CICM superior general Joseph Rutten mobilized an international team of experts to find a remedy
against the disease. In February 1931, he arrived in the vcariate of Xiwanzi (or ‘Hsi-wan-tzu’),
accompanied by a Hungarian doctor, Stefan Gajdos, to vaccinate the missionaries against exanthematic
typhus. After visiting pope Pius XI in Rome, the superior general had gone to Poland to contact the
vaccine developer, Dr. Rudolph Weigl. Fathers Verhelst and Pycke describe the continuation as follows:

In 1931, J. Rutten, together with his ex-student from Nan-hao-ch’ien, Dr. Joseph Chang, starts a
laboratory for the preparation of the vaccine in the Catholic University of Fu-jen. This university was
founded in 1927 in Pei-ching (renamed Pei-p’ing by the Nan-ching government). This vaccine means the
end of the deadly outcome of typhus, but not of the illness itself, which will still plague the missionaries.

The CICM had, still under the leadership of Joseph Rutten, put up their own hospital in Kuei-hua-ch’eng
(‘City of the Return of Civilization’, also known as ‘the Blue City’). A Belgian medical doctor and a French
nurse started working in a dispensary in 1921. In 1923-24, a General Catholic Hospital was built under
the supervision of Father Leo Vendelmans, who was among others also the architect of the Baguio
Cathedral in the Philippines. Besides the 100-beds hospital, the terrain also accommodated houses for
doctors and for the director, and buildings for student-nurses as well as for the ‘Belgian sisters’ (officially
called ‘Missionary canonesses of St. Augustine’, in the early 1960’s re-baptized as ‘ICM sisters’ or ‘Sisters
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary’). The European doctors were gradually replaced by Chinese doctors.
The hospital’s administration was transferred in the 1930’s to the Chinese province of Sui-yüan. When
the CICM received compensation money for the sufferings endured during the so-called ‘Boxer-
rebellion’ – during which several confreres died as martyrs- China and Belgium agreed to use the money
exclusively for infrastructural, educational and charitable projects in China, including for the hospital. In
1943, the Belgian sisters were replaced by native sisters, but were recalled a few years later, until the
revolution broke out. The last CICM missionaries – including an ophthalmologist-internist doctor – were
relieved from their hospital functions in 1953.
When the CICM missionary pioneers came to the Philippines in 1907, most of the country had already
been Christianized. In spite of this, the ‘missionary instinct’ of combining preaching with caring did play a
role as missionary practice, especially in remote areas. One of the pioneers who is said to have
“integrated medical aid for the people among his apostolic methods” is Rev. Father Oktaaf Vandewalle.
He made sure that there was in every town or barrio a local leader who would inform him if any urgent
matter had to be addressed, like somebody who got seriously sick. He is also said to have cured the
sister of an Aglipayan leader in Solano while he was staying at Bayombong!

In the city of Baguio, the CICM had started college-level courses in 1952, that developed into Saint Louis
University in 1963. Initially, the university offered health science-courses in her College (now called
‘school’) of Natural Sciences. In 1971, the clinical laboratories and charity clinic – that were named after
First Lady Imelda R. Marcos - had become a reality, providing free or affordable check-ups, laboratory
tests, and medicines to the population of deprived areas. As early as 1973, the SLU clinical laboratories
had made agreements with five rural medical centers, through the mediation of concerned local CICM
parish priests, to carry out laboratory analyses. The centers were in Banaue and Kiangan (Ifugao),
Salegseg (Kalinga-Apayao), Natonin (Mt. Province), and Sinipsip (Abatan, Benguet).

The SLU Blood Bank and the X-ray laboratory were the next steps in the expansion of paramedical
research and services. The MOMFI medical outreach missions were also thriving in that period.
However, the SLU dedication to science and public health culminated with the opening of a School of
Medicine and Hospital of the Sacred Heart (1976 and 1977). At the SLU-Hospital of the Sacred Heart, a
double target has always been aimed at: the hospital constitutes a significant addition to the city’s
public health infrastructure, while it also caters to the ‘hands on’ and practical training of medical and
nursing students. During School Year 1975-76, one of the research projects of the SLU Research and
Development Office – that had been erected just in 1974 – was a “Project Study on a School of Medicine
and Teaching Hospital in SLU” .

Putting up a hospital and operating such facility in a sustainable way isn’t something obvious for a
relatively small religious congregation that ran a young university in a developing country, outside the
capital city, without significant government support or financing. Still, the CICM fathers and their aides
in Saint Louis University dreamt of it and made the moves that were necessary to find external funding
for the huge project. It is no surprise that the SLU administration referred to the socio-economic
situation in the region and the country to support its request for foreign assistance.

The CICM-identity of the hospital should be reflected in the ‘human touch’ (or is it a ‘divine touch’?) of
the health care it continues to offer, in the respectful way in which it receives patients as goal in
themselves and images of Jesus-Christ, the Incarnate Word to Which the CICM was dedicated.

As we are returning to the CICM and to her founder, Father Theophile Verbist, the words from the
founder in a letter to his confreres in Scheut – in which he was referring to political developments both
in his native country and in that of his mission - acquires an ominous sound in the light of the current
global Covid-19 health crisis:
“Farewell, my dear friend, take well care of yourselves and give us a lot of news. Europe is really sick, but
China hasn’t healed. What will happen to the world? Let’s hurry to accumulate some merits, since the
end [of life] could be near”. [T. Verbist, Letter 394 – To J. Bax & T. Rutjes]

Sickness and health have always been a part of the missionaries’ lives, as they have tried at all times to
prevent illness, to mitigate, or to eliminate it. Missionaries aren’t afraid to face illness and put up efforts
to overcome it, since they count on the unfailing help of God’s healing Providence:

“I don’t easily give up and get away from hardships. The more trials the better!” [W. Padilla, bishop of
Ulaan-Baatar 2002-2018]