Maryknoll Sister Leonila Bermisa, the Hawaii lawyer who joined the missionary order in 1982 from Our Lady of the Mount Parish in Kalihi Valley to serve for many years in the Philippines, died in Manila on Feb. 28 at age 64. She was a Maryknoll Sister for 30 years. She had been battling cancer.
Maryknoll Sister Leonila Bermisa
Sister Nila, as she was affectionately called, was a teacher, an organizer and strong advocate for the rights of women and children, and a vigorous spokeswoman for peace and justice. She wrote the book, “That She May Dance Again: Rising from the Pain of Violence Against Women in the Philippine Catholic Church.” She also served as the director of vocations for her order.
Sister Leonila was born on April 11, 1948, in San Manuel, Philippines, to Silvinio and Teodora Villanueva Bermisa. She earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts at the University of St. Thomas in Manila and a bachelor of law from the University of the East in Manila. She practiced law for 10 years in Honolulu before entering Maryknoll.
She also received a master’s degree in religious studies, with an emphasis on women and religion, from the Institute of Women’s Studies in Manila, and a doctor of ministry degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary.
Sister Leonila’s first Maryknoll assignment was in Indonesia, where she taught English as a second language to faculty members at Parahyangan University, Bandung. In Indonesia she also worked at Magdalena House, a transitional house for women prostitutes in Jakarta, from 1986 to 1988.
She returned to her native Philippines to Western Mindanao where she worked with the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace, was the coordinator of the Justice and Peace Program in the Prelature of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur, and the coordinator of the Western Mindanao Sub-Region of Rural Missionaries of the Philippines where in Quezon City she helped establish SABAKAN, a women’s program.
From 1994 to 1995, Sister Leonila documented human rights violations for the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines and also worked with dropout youth. She served at the Immaculate Conception Center for Child Development in Malabon, a district of metro Manila, and taught and was the academic dean at the Institute of Formation and Religious Studies in Quezon City.
From 2002 to 2005, she researched and documented sexual abuse in the Catholic Church for the Women and Gender Commission Education Program of the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines.
Sister Leonila was also the live-in administrator of Talitha Cum, a temporary home for women victims and survivors of sexual violence, from 2003 to 2005.
She then served as director of vocations for the Maryknoll Sisters at their center in Ossining, N.Y., from 2005 to 2009.
Sister Leonila is survived by her mother, now living in Las Vegas, her brothers Arthur and Rosario of Williamsburg, Va., and Silvino and Elmar of Honolulu, and sisters Sylvia Bradley and Josephine Belmonte, both of Las Vegas.
Her funeral was March 5 in the Miriam College Chapel in the Philippines. She was buried at the Maryknoll Sisters Mausoleum in the Philippines. At a later date, a vesper service and memorial Mass will take place at the Maryknoll Center in Ossining.
