OUR MISSION
Our goal is to eradicate poverty and sickness, and empower the deprived with the means to help themselves by introducing livelihood programmes. In order to do this we visit the basura at least three times a week, and the other apostolates twice a week. We birng food, nourishment, medicines, clothibng, books, portable water, we teach values, moral behaviour, spiriual upbrining and songs at our home for the homeless. Our sisters care for the abandoned, some crippled and disabled. Children are brought to school, and the medical, spiritual, physical, social needs dealt with compassion and gentleness. We have food lines for the needy around our area in Dayangdang. The Sisters go out to homes where there are lonely and destitutes elderly people, and they bring spiritual comfort, advice and healing to the lonely. We minister to drug addicts and the psychologically deviant, and try to heabilitate where possible and necessary. We acquire from local and chiefly foriegn donors, and distribute to the needy, medicines, medical supplies and equipment, food vitamins, books and educational supplies and equipment, orphanage supplies, seeds of begetables and flowers, toys, hygiene products, footwear, hospital supplies , beds and mattresses,cribs, etc.
OUR VISION
The Life of the Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor is centred around prayer, from which is gathered the strength, courage and grace to go out to comfort and alleviate the suffering of the aged, and abused, the abandoned and the afflicted.We look forward to the day when we can ease sickness and poverty, and all God's will be able to freely enjoy the gifts of Creation.
WHAT WE DO
The Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor take vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, in joyful free service to the least of God's poor. Our unique charism is the freedom to cheerfully to perform our charitable works with, for and because of the Poor, and with trust in Divine Providence, as exemplifies by JESUS CHRIST CRUCIFIED ON THE CROSS.
OUR CLIENTELE
Our ministry reaches out to all the needy and deprived, both within and beyond our area of work. We often assist those who have been abused or abandoned in outlying regions. Our focus is on helping anyone in need who comes to us. While our outreach is not confined by geographic boundaries, it is guided by the level of need. We aim to serve the poor wherever they are and wherever we are invited to minister.
Our History
The Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor (CFSOP) is a new dynamic international religious community of dedicated Missionary Sisters of the Roman Catholic Church, who, inspired by the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the life and charism of their Patron, St. Francis of Assisi, humbly and freely offer their works of mercy and compassion, to the least of our poor Brothers and Sisters, in striving to save souls, inspire hearts, and uplift lives as they spread God’s Divine Love and the Spirit of Hope.
On December 12, 1996, this new religious community was jointly founded in the Philippines by the Father Founder of the Missionaries of the Poor (MOP), Very Rev. Fr Richard Ho Lung, MOP, Rev. Fr. Brian Kerr, M.O.P., the Founder of the Missionaries of the Poor mission in the Philippines, along with Rev. Mo. Josefina "Joy" Consuelo Surtida, (M.O.P.S), and later, Rev. Mother Joan Clare Chin Loy, OSF -- as the first ever Sister counterpart of the MOP Brothers. Over the years, the community has established mission centers for the abandoned, homeless poor, mentally and physically challenged children, orphans, the elderly, the destitute, HIV victims, and struggling poor children, women, and families in Jamaica, Haiti, the Philippines and Kenya. Presently, we are striving earnestly to grow and expand our mission works and to mobilize urgently needed support for the formation of our Sisters and the development of our ministries, as we faithfully spread our charism of mercy and compassion in joyful service of the least of our poorest Brothers and Sisters, all for the love of Christ Jesus and Holy Mother Church.
Conceptualization
In 1996, moved by the Holy Spirit and by the many young women responding to the invitation to join in the minstry of serving the poor, Rev. Fr Brian Kerr, the Founder of the Missionaries of the Poor in the Philippines, contacted and received official permission from the MOP Father Founder, Very Rev. Fr. Richard Ho Lung, a Jamaican-Chinese Jesuit and former professor at Boston College and lecturer at the University of the West Indies, to begin this new Sisterhood under the leadership of Rev. Mother Josefina Surtida Consuelo. His Excellency, Most Rev. Leonardo Z. Legaspi, O.P., D.D., Archbishop of Caceres, grnted his official canonical blessing for the beginning of this new religious community. Mother Joan Clare Chin Loy, OSF, (a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany headquartered in Buffalo, upstate New York, and the newly retired Principal of Mt. Alvernia High School, Montego Bay, Jamaica after 45 years in education), came together later to support, form and build up this vibrant new religious community of faith-filled deeply-motivated sisters, originally called the "Missionaries of the Poor, Sisters." In 2009, the congregation was renamed the "Compassionate Franciscan Sisters of the Poor (CFSOP)," and went forward with autonomy under the joint leadership of Mother Joan Clare and Mother Josefina Consuelo Surtida.
In the Philippines beginning from 1996, mission centers were built and developed by the Sisters in Dayandang, Bagumbayan, Balatas and Pacol in Naga City, Bicol Province, where the Sisters currently administer Queen of Peace Children's Home, an outstanding nationally and internationally-recognized home and adoption center for over 50 orphans and mentally and physically challenged children, as well as a nursery school, a nutrition feeding program for 55 children, and an outreach ministry for over 250 poor families.
Responding to the needs of poor squatters scavenging in city garbage dumps throughout the Philippines, the Compassionate Sisters have constructed centers where they worked in the Balatas garbage dump-site, the Concepcion Grande Squatter settlement and other depressed areas of Naga City. They also operate the Queen of Hope Day Care and Learning Center in the Catmon garbage dump-site in Malabon, Manila. This center is also located right adjoining the very garbage-dump itself, where the Sisters live and provide care and community outreach services to the children and families living with them in the neighboring Basura garbage dumps.
Over the years, the CFSOP Sisters have also mobilized and coordinated extensive aid programs to poor schools, barangays, hospitals and colleges, as well as major emergency relief supplies for thousands of typhoon victims, floodings, volcanic eruptions and other natural calamities. In their efforts to serve poor ghetto-communities, the Sisters seek to implement their specific Christian-based H.E.L.P. outreach model of community development among the poor.
In Montego Bay, Jamaica, the CFSOP Sisters have founded a mission center where they operate a city-clinic for the neglected poor families of Montego Bay and the surrounding rural areas, as well as a Hospice Care Center for HIV-afflicted residents and elderly dying patients, and a pastoral care ministry within the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral parish community.
In Viloux in the Diocese of Les Cayes, Haiti, the CFSOP Sisters for the past 12 years have initiated an extensive basic nutrition and education center for over 150 children whom they feed each day, along with many outreach support programs to over 400 families whom they faithfully serve. This region, ravaged by numerous hurricanes, natural disasters, earthquakes and a cholera outbreak, cries out for mercy and urgent assistance. Our CFSOP convents and centers have become safe harbors and sure refuge for the many poor and struggling mothers, families and children who flock to our centers seeking some measure of God's tender love and mercy in facing the many needs and struggles they encounter.
CFSOP Sisters plan to expand in the USA by building future convents and opening local Women Crisis Centers and other CFSOP H.E.L.P. outreach programs for the homeless destitute poor, shut-ins and struggling mothers, such as soup kitchens and material aid and support centers for mothers and children, as well as parish-based home visitation programs for the elderly, the sick and the dying.
On December 7, 2022, the CFSOP joyfully received the full permanent canonical acceptance of their CFSOP community’s ministry, presence and mission in the Archdiocese of Nairobi, from the newly appointed Metropolitan Archbishop of Nairobi, His Grace, Most Rev. Philip A. Anyolo. Our CFSOP Sisters now therefore ever more earnestly continue to faithfully establish our Queen of Hope Formation House and Novitiate for our young Kenyan Formandi in Chokaa, and our Queen of Hope Child Care and Nutrition Centre and our mission outreach programs for the evangelization and care of our poor children, destitute mothers and struggling families, living in the ghetto community of Chokaa, East Nairobi, Kenya. To God be the glory!
Inspired by their fervent commitment to serve the Lord with joy, the CFSOP diligently carry out their mission, embracing the Lord's poor with His divine love. They remain steadfast in evangelizing and extending their works of mercy, continually striving to embody the compassion of Jesus.