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Poor keep oldest active Jesuit going at 95
By Belinda Olivares-Cunanan
Philippine Daily Inquirer 09/20/2009
 Father Pierre Tritz, the French-born Filipino priest who founded the Educational Research and Development Assistance Foundation (ERDA) in 1974 to help prevent impoverished children from becoming school dropouts, likes to say that at 95, he’s the “oldest active Jesuit” in the country, and probably the world.
Five years ago, Tritz bragged that he belonged to the exclusive club of Jesuits aged 90 and above. Today, their ranks have thinned and he’s sandwiched between Fr. Federico Martinez, 96, and the equally legendary Father James B. Reuter, 92.
I chatted with Tritz, elegant and ramrod-straight in a barong Tagalog, at the recent farewell reception tendered by French Ambassador Thierry Borja de Mozota for Press Attaché Carolle Lucas.
I asked him how he had been feeling, and he said his hearing had weakened somewhat.
Sometimes, too, he has slight dizzy spells while saying his 6 a.m. daily Mass and he has to hold on to the altar for a while, his nurse said.
But then, he reasoned, “I can’t be perfect at 95, you know.”
Otherwise, he has no dietary restrictions. And he is still the night chaplain of the Infant Jesus Hospital on Laong Laan in Sampaloc, Manila, a job that he has held for nearly 30 years at the invitation of hospital administrator Doctor Rolando Songco.
The night chaplain has a standing order to the nurses to wake him if an emergency service is needed – for example, to baptize a dying baby or to comfort a grieving family. He is also on call for confessions.
Full day’s work
Tritz has opted for night duty all these years in exchange for free lodging at the hospital and “to be of service to the sick.”
He’s entitled to a room at the Jesuit community residence at Xavier School, which belongs to the China province where he is still counted as a member. But he prefers the hospital also because he gets medical attention there.
He’s up at 5 a.m. After the 6 a.m. Mass and a light breakfast, he prepares to report to the ERDA Foundation on Banawe, Quezon City, where as president he spends a full day attending to its business of keeping schoolchildren supported by ERDA in three levels (24,000 this year, including 90 scholars in college).
Periodically he crosses town with a driver to go to Pandacan where, in the early 1990s, he set up the ERDA Technical-Vocational School in anticipation of the country’s huge need for youths with technical training.
ERDA Tech – with over 600 students enrolled this year – gives full scholarship to high school students from the poorest Metro Manila families, simultaneous with training in any of about a dozen technical skills.
Its goal is to enable its graduates to quickly gain employment.
Slowing down
Tritz says he is slowly turning over various aspects of the work to Father Johnny Go, ERDA board chairman and president of the Jesuit-run Xavier School in Greenhills, San Juan.
But he says: “I can see myself giving up ERDA, but not the hospital. What would I do if I give up my work in the hospital?”
The ERDA board has been helping Tritz slow down. For some time now he has skipped reporting to work on Wednesdays, and there’s a little room in the office where he can take an hour’s siesta after lunch.
Part of the business he still attends to is raising P80 million yearly to finance ERDA’s operations. Until a few years ago when he was finally grounded by the board, he travelled to Europe and other regions annually with his begging bowl.
Joke at ERDA
It quickly became a joke at ERDA how sharing a train compartment with Tritz in Europe could be hazardous to a stranger’s health, as he could end up parting with a couple of euros after the priest goes into his impassioned spiel about Manila’s street children.
(I talk from experience. In the early 1980s, I accepted an invitation from ERDA vice president Susan Sulit to an innocent lugawan fundraiser – and I have since been stuck as ERDA’s pro bono public relations officer.)
Tritz has stopped roaming the world for funds. Now he just writes organizations abroad (such as Les Amis des Enfants du Monde, ERDA Belgium Philippines and PagAsa Group of Japan) and local businesses (such as Filinvest, Jollibee, Fiesta Greetings, Marubeni Scholarship Foundation and Lighthouse Club-Manila).
His track record and spirit of dedicated service – the subject of many books and magazines abroad – still work their magic, though the funds are never enough and more are needed to sustain ERDA’s support mission. As a young man
In 1949, young Pierre Tritz, who had finished his scholastic studies and was ordained priest in Shanghai, found himself expelled, together with other religious, when Mao’s communists overran China.
He spent his tertianship in Belgium, but soon received orders from the Jesuits’ China province, which had fast relocated in Manila, to come with dispatch.
Tritz arrived in Manila in 1950, and China’s loss became the Philippines’ gain. Teaching psychology at the Ateneo de Manila and the Araneta University, he soon came face to face with the problem of Philippine education.
He was disheartened to note that public schoolchildren would drop out by 40 percent by the sixth grade, and that “hidden costs” such as the families’ inability to afford school materials, uniforms and transportation expenses were among the major causes.
In 1974, with the help of a few volunteers, he founded ERDA to help stem the tide of public school dropouts.
600,000 plus
 Also in that year, Tritz realized the difficulty of dealing with the government as an alien. Together with about a dozen other Jesuits, he took his oath as a Filipino citizen before then president Ferdinand Marcos.
Between ERDA Foundation and ERDA Tech, Tritz has shepherded over 600,000 poor Filipino students through school in the past 35 years.
And long before other educators recognized it, Tritz saw the urgent need to prepare students in preschool, which Education Secretary Jesli Lapus today confirms.
According to Lapus, 20 percent of public school students drop out by the third grade owing to lack of preparation; 90 percent go straight to first grade instead of going through preschool like the affluent students.
ERDA today runs some 200 preschools nationwide in morning and afternoon shifts.
Tritz has founded other community programs for the underprivileged. One is the Albert Schweitzer Association of the Philippines, which promotes and protects children’s rights by providing, among other things, free legal aid and consultation for children who run afoul of the law because of their poverty.
There’s also the Foundation for the Assistance to Hansenites, which has for the past 21 years educated and provided for the needs of leprosy patients and their families.
Success stories
 ERDA has produced many heartwarming success stories out of what would have been lives shattered by grinding poverty, by keeping children schooled and motivated to seek higher education and training.
One of them is Jennifer Ann Ledesma, a scholar of Les Amis des Enfants du Monde from high school to college. She graduated with a degree in accountancy from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, passed the exams for certified public accountants in October 2007, and is now a senior auditor at Global Axis Corp. in Quezon City.
Another is ERDA scholar John Paul Claudio of Iloilo City whom it nominated to be the first child-commissioner of the National Anti-Poverty Commission, enabling him to represent the country in conferences abroad. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Central Philippine University and now works as a building engineer in Ayala’s Glorietta 4.
There is also Marlon Rueda, an ERDA Tech scholar sponsored by the Fondation Luxembourgeoise Raous Follereau, who specialized in food technology and trained at Kamayan ng Nayong Pilipino.
Through sheer persistence, Marlon found work as a kitchen helper in the Japanese restaurant of Manila Diamond Hotel. He became a cook in a Magsaysay cruise ship and, five years later, won the fancy title of “chef de partie” as supervisor of a kitchen station.
‘RP’s Mother Teresa’
It’s the thought of impoverished children claiming their right to education and a bright future that keeps Tritz – once termed by the late President Corazon Aquino as “the Mother Teresa of the Philippines” – going at 95.
We can keep faith in his vision by supporting ERDA.
Donate “95 Something” to help bring poor children back to school and give them hope. To download 95 Something donor form (US/EURO donation), click here |
