MANILA (UCAN) – Modern-day missioners are needed in the Philippines who can keep up with new trends and who are politically savvy, says the leader of the Jesuits in the country.

“We need new missionaries who can play with the images of modern media, who can sing the music of our young, who can speak the language of government and politics, who can tap comfortably on keyboards, who can remain unfazed by new technologies and new ideas and trends,” said Father Jose Cecilio Magadia, Philippines Provincial of the Society of Jesus.

He said the country needs more missioners now compared to the 19th century, when black-robed Jesuit priests first came here from Spain.

Father Magadia’s comments came during a homily at a June 14 Mass in Manila Cathedral. The Mass was to launch the final phase of celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the return of the Jesuits to the Philippines, after the 18th-century papal suppression of the Jesuits, and the founding of what is now Ateneo de Manila University.

Father Magadia said poverty, inequality and injustice in the country frighten many Filipinos into leaving for other shores.

“To such a world, we should offer new missionaries … new bearers of the fire, new heralds of the Good News, willing to win the weary world for the Kingdom of God,” said the Jesuit provincial.

Mayor Alfredo Lim of Manila and other government officials, Jesuit priests, Ateneo teachers, alumni, students, their parents and other guests packed the cathedral for the event presided over by Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales of Manila.

Father Magadia recalled the first arrival of 10 Jesuits from Spain’s Aragon province to Manila and their subsequent establishment of missions in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines.

On Dec 10, 1859, the order took charge of the only primary school in Intramuros, in Manila, which they renamed Escuela Municipal. From an initial 23 boys, enrollment grew over the years and the school became one of the principal schools for the Filipino elite.

By 1909, when it renamed the Ateneo de Manila, it was providing primary, secondary and tertiary-level education. The original campus moved to central Manila, but was destroyed during the Second World War.

In 1952 the campus moved to its current site in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, where close to 12,000 students study from primary to university levels. It has also opened professional schools for business and law in Makati City and a college of medicine in Pasig City.

Ateneo University president Father Bienvenido Nebres was among 40 Jesuits who concelebrated the June 14 Mass. Earlier, he told UCA News that since he first became president in 1993, his focus has been to maintain the establishment’s high standards and keep producing young men and women to be “people for others.”

It is a “challenge,” he acknowledged “to achieve competitive excellence, while asking, to whom do you use your excellence for?”

Integrated social involvement is a key feature of the institution’s curricula at all levels. Its centerpiece social program is a university-wide social action program in partnership with Gawad Kalinga, a Philippine-based poverty reduction and nation-building movement that builds low-cost housing communities and schools in impoverished areas.

In 2004 the Federation of Accrediting Agencies of the Philippines and the Philippine Association of Accrediting Schools, Colleges and Universities granted the institution the highest possible rating.

During the June 14 celebration, past and present students came in droves to the cathedral, some dressed in their school colors, others 19th-century gowns and shirts. Jesuit artifacts were also offered at the Mass and donated for a planned museum.

Activities extending beyond the Dec. 10 anniversary include conferences and academic convocations, music concerts, art and science exhibits and a book launch.