SR. LUZ EMMANUEL SORIANO Photo by Lilen Uy

IN THE garden of peace that Sr. Luz Emmanuel Soriano began more than 15 years ago on the hilly Antipolo campus of Assumption College, there is evil on four legs, a stray cat that has a nasty habit of preying on the birds in the eco-park, leaving the good sister not too pleased. But even the cat that she calls a "witch" cannot seem to darken the mood of the Assumption nun, not even when she sees it slinking behind some bushes on a morning when the sky has gone gray and is threatening to unload more than a bit of rain. She simply harrumphs, the pesky cat scampers away, and Sr. Luz is back to chirping happily about the eaglets in the park, and their caretaker named Darigold.

At 70, Sr. Luz is used to confronting more formidable foes and handling far more complicated problems. She has been school administrator in at least three Assumption campuses, for one thing, and she did start the Pacem eco-park, which includes mini museums devoted to butterflies, seashells, and bugs. Twenty years ago, she was also among the ubiquitous nuns at Edsa who led ordinary Filipinos in prayer after prayer, although she remembers that she was busy helping prepare and distribute sandwiches when the tanks began to close in on them.

One of the most popular images that came out of that People Power revolution was that of nuns clutching rosaries, standing in the way of massive tanks and grim-faced soldiers with rifles in their arms. Sr. Luz herself can only recall that when the tanks were "coming, coming" and President Ferdinand Marcos was thundering on the radio to "crush them," the people massed at Edsa reacted in various ways, although no one seems to have thought of getting out of the tanks' path.

"We were lined up in the street," she recounts. "We were kneeling, some were standing up, we were saying the rosary. And I closed my eyes and said, 'This is it, when I open my eyes I'll be in heaven.'"

But no one on Edsa wound up as roadkill that day, a "miracle" that Sr. Luz attributes largely to "our Lady of Peace." More secular observers say having nuns on the frontline was a brilliant move, since the sight of the religious women resplendent in their habits proved enough for even the most hardened soldiers to stop and defy their commander in chief's orders.

That tactic was nothing new as it had been used in labor strikes and protest rallies, actions frowned upon by the Marcos government, which usually responded with violence. The latter was why nuns who took part in protests would instinctively rush to the frontline once the police or the military appeared — they were a shield against those who would do the protesters harm.

Most times, the approach worked. Sometimes it didn't, and the police and soldiers would beat up or hose down nuns along with the protesters. Some nuns even found themselves behind bars, among them Sr. Mariani Dimaranan, although she became a political detainee after a military raid of her convent yielded materials belonging to her that were considered subversive. The late Franciscan sister spent three months in detention, an experience that led her to join (and later head) the Task Force Detainees, which had been formed by the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines to document abuses by the military and the police, and protect the rights of detainees.

	SR. LUZ EMMANUEL SORIANO Photo by Lilen Uy

SELF-SACRIFICE, of course, is a given with nuns, who offer their lives to the service of God. This service can take many forms, depending on the thrust of their congregations and, at times, their own personal temperament. But since helping ensure social justice is among the ways of illuminating the glory of God, it was perhaps inevitable that martial law would provoke more than a few nuns to begin thinking outside the box for ways to ease the impact of living under an oppressive regime. In 1984, the nun as a political activist would even be immortalized in film, with popular actress Vilma Santos starring in the movie "Sister Stella L."

Aside from Sr. Mariani, among the more visible and vocal sisters during that time were Sr. Mary John Mananzan, Sr. Soledad Perpiñan, and Sr. Christine Tan, who were all Benedictine nuns. Sr. Sol would start the databank IBON Facts and Figures, which provided more reliable and relevant statistics than those churned out by the Marcos government, in 1978. Earlier, Sr. Sol, Sr. Mary John, and other nuns had also formed Friends of the Workers, which among other things tapped convents for sisters to help out in picket lines.

Filipino-Australian academic Mina Roces notes that other nuns who were particularly active included those from the convents of the Good Shepherd and the Assumption-which may surprise some people who know the former primarily as a source of delectable jams and the latter for running schools for the daughters of the rich and powerful. Before they were shipped off overseas, Marcos's own daughters, Imee and Irene, were studying in Assumption Herran.

Born to political families, Corazon Cojuangco and Gloria Macapagal had also studied at Assumption, albeit years apart. Both became president through people power.

Assumption nuns, however, have always made it a point to adopt a downtrodden community wherever they establish schools (their congregation believes in achieving social reform through education) or convents. At the same time, they have always tried to make sure their students would become, as Sr. Luz puts it, "sisters of the poor."

In the tableau of good vs. evil that was Edsa 1, those two worlds of the Assumption nuns came together. The purple-clad sisters based in Metro Manila, most of whom went as soon as they could to Edsa, called on their alumnae from the exclusive Makati enclaves, as well as on people they had helped in an impoverished community of Malibay, in Pasay, where they did outreach work and ran a social action center. At Edsa, Sr. Luz says, one saw "rich people from Forbes working together side by side, all for the same cause, with people from slum areas."

"That was really something, you know," she says. "It was a beautiful experience of sharing and solidarity."

"A spiritual experience also," she adds. "Because I believe it was faith — faith in the Filipino and faith that God was there and with us. That is why we were able to have a revolution, but a peaceful one, we didn't have to kill one another."