2024 World Methodist Peace Award
(originally published here)
Deaconess Dollaga
Norma P. Dollaga, a United Methodist deaconess, has been being recognized for her efforts to stop extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.
For decades as a deaconess, Dollaga has long been a peace activist and advocated for Filipinos on the margins.
Deaconesses and home missioners are United Methodist lay people called to ministries of love, justice and service. In the Philippines, the office of deaconess is a prime way for many women to serve the church, and Dollaga long has been a mentor to deaconesses and other Christians.
Since 2000, she has served as top executive of the Ecumenical Center for Development. She also frequently teaches at Harris Memorial College, her alma mater and a training ground for deaconesses and other women leaders.
Dollaga also inspired other deaconesses and fellow Filipinos to respond when “the war on drugs” declared in 2016 by then President Rodrigo Duterte turned into a war on poor people who used drugs. Unidentified masked men on motorcycles would go through urban slums at night, with a list of people to kill. Though no official number of deaths was ever reported, it is likely in the thousands — perhaps tens of thousands. No court of law was involved.
Dollaga co-founded Rise Up for Life and for Rights, an ecumenical alliance to campaign against these extrajudicial killings. Rise Up both documented the violence and provided support to victims’ families. She also organized prayer vigils and memorial services to remember the victims.
Abrahams said she had “the special gift of empowering others to join the struggle for justice and peace, working in the trenches herself to move others forward.”
Dollaga recounted how a mother told her that she planned to go to church to ask God why her son was killed, but then the church came to her through the deaconesses, pastors and priests involved in Rise Up. “God revealed himself through you,” the woman told Dollaga and her fellow peace activists.
“We cannot afford to lose justice,” Dollaga added to a chorus of “Amens” from people at the conference.
“So we will fight for it with all victims of injustice.”
She said she shares her award with the blessed ones whom Jesus lifts up in the Beatitudes, “those who suffer the most, those who rise up and choose ways of struggle to fight for justice and peace, those who are serving the least … and resisting the evils of oppression and exploitation.”
The Rev. Liberato “Levi” Bautista, a fellow Filipino who heads the United Nations office for the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, said the award was not just an affirmation of Dollaga and her fellow deaconesses but also the people she serves: victims of human rights violations.
“I think both the World Methodist Council and she are both honored by this award,” he said. “The World Methodist Council honors her, but they’re honored by having her.”