Don Villanueva is the Filipino priest who won the prestigious Asian Nobel. He brought dignity to thousands of people, opposing with humanity the dictatorship of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

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Asia also has its own Nobel Prize, established to celebrate “the best of humanity”.

This is the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, aptly renamed the “Asian Nobel” and this year it was awarded to the Filipino priest Flaviano Antonio L. Villanueva.

Before him the Dalai Lama (in 1959) and Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1962).

 

The priest who won the Asian Nobel Prize

The recognition for Don Villanueva was announced on August 31 and was bestowed on him for his ability to effect social change on the continent.

Son of a past marked by addiction, Don Villanueva underwent a personal conversion and a spiritual renewal that led him to the priesthood in 2006, joining the Society of the Divine Word (SVD).

The experience of fragility lived in his youth made him particularly sensitive toward those who live on the margins of society, pushing him to open in 2015 the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in Manila to offer welcome, training and dignity.

 

Don Villanueva and the opposition to the Filipino dictator Duterte

But the most significant act of his ministry manifested itself in the darkest days of the so-called “war on drugs”.

Mentre tens of thousands of people, often poor and vulnerable, were killed outside any legal process, Don Villanueva took on the task of finding the bodies, organizing funerals, consoling widows and orphans and building the “Dambana ng Paghilom”, the first memorial dedicated to the victims of the repression.

His commitment cost him serious charges of sedition under the dictatorial administration of Rodrigo Duterte, which we covered on UCCR in 2018. The charges were later dropped in 2023, but the threats never ceased.

In March of this year, the former president was arrested on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

 

The committee: “He healed the broken”

The Asian committee that awarded him the prize clarified, with a profound text, the reasons for honoring the Catholic priest: «He created spaces to rebuild what had been unjustly erased, healing the broken, bringing home those who had been abandoned and rekindling hope when it seemed lost».

In short, a witness of Christ in a terrible moment in the history of the Philippines.

The priest will receive the prestigious award (along with a nonprofit organization and another activist) on November 7 at the Metropolitan Theatre in Manila.