She has been described as frail, old, skinny and weak, but she made the tough-talking leader of the Philippines seethe in public. “Who are you?” fumed President Rodrigo Duterte. “You do not have the right to criticize us…. Just because you are a nun? The president even admitted that he personally ordered an investigation into the activities of Sister Patricia Anne Fox. Who indeed is this 71-year-old Australian nun whose detention hogged the headlines in Manila?
Sister Pat, as her friends call her, and her Congregation of Religious Sisters of Our Lady of Sion have been working in the Philippines since 1990. Marie Theodor Ratisbonne and his brother Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne established the missionary congregation in France in 1843. In 1890, the congregation established its presence in Australia with a mission “to improve Catholic- Jewish relations and to witness God’s faithful love for the Jewish people.”
“I fell in love with the Filipino people. I was inspired by their resilience and sense of humour, even in the middle of a crisis,” she told.
She said her congregation needed “to see the world through the eyes of the poor” and they saw the widespread poverty in Asia.
