By Virginia Saldanha
MA. Corazon Y Mateo was a Filipina from the island of Cebu in the Central Philippines. She was a member of the Teresian Association and lived and served in Taiwan for the greater part of her adult life.
She did not want to be called a missionary, because her passion was playing her role as a lay member of the Church to help the Church in Asia to be relevant to the times and its mission amidst the diversity of religions and cultures.
Her mission in Taiwan began as a teacher in the mid-seventies. She played that role in a very personal way, building relationships with her students.
Cora valued relationships, whether with her family, her Teresian colleagues, her students, or her colleagues and the bishops in the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). She was a good friend and a very supportive colleague to everyone.
Cora was among the FABC’s earliest executive secretaries, serving the organization for almost 25 years. She was also the first non-religious layperson and woman to hold the post.
Her passion and commitment to promoting the role of the laity in the Church’s mission were evident in the evolution of the FABC Office of Laity (FABC-OL) under her leadership.
She was instrumental in starting the Asian Integral Pastoral Approach (AsIPA) after the 5th Plenary Assembly in Bandung in 1991 which articulated the vision for the Church in Asia as a communion of communities.
She worked hard to develop AsIPA under the tutelage of Bishop Oswald Hirmer and Bishop Fritz Lobinger of South Africa. It evolved into the AsIPA Desk under the aegis of the FABC-OL)
She organized the first Asian Laity Meeting in 1994 in South Korea to introduce AsIPA to the laypeople of Asia. She invited Cardinal Eduardo Francisco Pironio, the then head of the Dicastery of the Laity, to the meeting, who inspired the laypeople with his warm and down-to-earth way of relating to them. Being Latin American, he had first-hand knowledge of the workings of the Small Christian Community (SCC).
In view of the forthcoming UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, she invited women to the 6th Plenary Assembly of the FABC held in Manila in January 1995, where she was instrumental in getting the bishops to commit to establishing a Desk for Women in the FABC-OL.
I met Cora at the First Asian Laity Meeting, where I was a delegate. She immediately identified me as a potential candidate for a role in the FABC-OL and invited me to take over the Desk for Women in the FABC in 1995.
Cora had a vision, and she worked hard to achieve it. She believed strongly in women’s leadership and worked to promote it. She was a wonderful mentor and a good friend as she guided me in my early years at the FABC.
Simultaneously, she built up the AsIPA Desk. She got together a team of clergy and lay persons from Asia, many of whom were women, to form an Asian Resource Team that provided training to dioceses in the formation of SCCs.
AsIPA was her passion and she worked very hard and left no stone unturned to make AsIPA available to every diocese of the FABC member countries. She truly believed that it helped promote the role and vocation of the laity in the Church.
She was dedicatedly pastoral in all she did, whether promoting women’s roles, training young people, or encouraging the laity in general to live their vocation for the good of the Church in Asia.
Cora was instrumental in activating the Asian youth ministry, believing in the young’s gifts as agents of hope for church and society. Through organizing annual Asian youth days and the Youth Ministers’ meetings held in different parts of Asia, she brought youth and youth ministers together to build a relationship of trust and partnership in mission.
She left the FABC- OLF (Office of Laity and Family) in 2008, soon after Cardinal Oswald Gracias joined the FABC, and as a Canon lawyer felt the statutes had to be changed to create terms for executive secretaries. Till that time, executive secretaries continued to work as long as they were effective and contributed to the growth and enrichment of the Church in Asia.
She remained in Taiwan to head the Pastoral office of Hsinchu Diocese until her retirement. The greatest gift Cora had was her faith in God’s plan for Asia. The BEC/SCC leaders in many countries will remember her gentle facilitating style and her love of the gospel. The young people will look back fondly at her motherly love and inspiring presence.
When the history of FABC is written from the perspective of the offices and their contribution to its success, Cora’s name will be prominent among those who gave faith-filled pastoral direction over her long tenure.
Cora has fought the good fight, she has finished the race and kept the faith. Now we pray that there is in store for her the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to her on entering eternal life on Dec 2. – UCA News
