(ZENIT News / Manila, 09/24/2025).- Father Flavio Antonio L. Villanueva, a member of the Society of the Divine Word (SDW), will receive the Ramon Magsaysay Prize (RMAF), known as the Asian Nobel Prize, awarded by the Foundation to support the best of humanity on the Continent.
Father Flavio opened the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in Manila in 2015 to offer hospitality, formation, and dignity. The name is the Tagalog acronym for the programs the Center offers: eat, learn, bathe, be well. Its overall goal is to provide comprehensive, systematic, and dignified care to people living in poverty.
It seeks to rebuild lives through a culture of systematic, comprehensive, and dignified care. Its means include providing skills for paid employment, creating spaces and opportunities to care for other poor people in the neighbourhood, and providing care to homeless individuals, especially children.
The Award to Father Flavio Villanueva was announced on August 31. The nomination underscores his ability to promote social change. Before him, the Dalai Lama received it in 1959 and Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1962. One of the most significant projects promoted by the priest is the Dambana ng Paghilom (Healing Sanctuary), the country’s first columbarium to care for victims of the war on drugs. This program «has not only provided comfort to widows and orphans, but has also enabled them to lead productive lives.»
The priest of the Society of the Divine Word experienced a sad dependence in his youth and a personal conversion, whose spiritual regeneration led him to the priesthood in 2006. The experience of fragility he experienced as a young man sensitized him to care for the marginalized.
The RMAF Foundation elected the Filipino priest in recognition of «his lifelong mission to uphold the dignity of the poor and oppressed, demonstrating daily with unwavering faith that by serving the least of his brothers and sisters, all are restored.»
Furthermore, RMAF pointed out that the Catholic priest «created spaces to rebuild what had been unjustly erased, healing those who were broken, bringing home those who had been abandoned, and rekindling hope when it seemed lost.»
Father Flavio Villanueva worked during the difficult days of the so-called war on drugs established by President Rodrigo Duterte, which was waged as a means of neutralizing illegal individuals involved in the drug trade nationwide, as published by HuffPost on September 23. 2025. Duterte incited the public to kill alleged criminals and drug addicts. Investigations by media and human rights groups showed that police routinely executed unarmed drug suspects and planted weapons and drugs as evidence, facts denied by Philippine Authorities.
Father Villanueva searched for bodies, organized funerals, comforted widows and orphans, and built the Dambana ng Paghilom, the first monument dedicated to the victims of repression. That commitment earned him accusations of sedition from the Government in 2018, charges dropped in 2023, although he still receives threats.
In February 2018, the International Criminal Court in The Hague announced a preliminary examination into the murders during the Philippine drug war. In March 2018, the former President was arrested on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, President of the Philippine Episcopal Conference, stated, in a press release on August 31, that Father Villanueva is a «courageous prophet of our time.» He added: «His witness embodies the spirit of the Social Doctrine of the Church and the evangelical call to defend the sacredness of life.»
Father Flavio Villanueva will receive the prestigious Award along with the Indian NGO Educate Girls and Maldivian environmentalist Shaahina Ali during the November 7 ceremony at the Metropolitan Theater in Manila.
