JERUSALEM – Sister Maria David Magbanua, FSE, was highlighted in a recent National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report for her service with the children of migrants and asylum seekers in Jerusalem. Sister Maria David has been the director of St. Rachel Center for the past three years, carrying out this ministry under the auspices of the Latin Patriarchate’s Vicariate for Migrants and Asylum Seekers. St. Rachel Center provides services as a day care program, after school and youth programs, summer and school holiday camps, foster care program and volunteer program. The day care program ministers to up to 28 babies from four months to three years old during the day. The after-school program serves about 30 school age children, and the summer and holiday camps minister to about 60 children ages four to 17 years. The article describes the Church’s response to the overwhelming need for this ministry as migrants and asylum seekers come to the Holy Land seeking a better life and future.
Sister Maria David, herself an immigrant from the Philippines, arrived in Jerusalem as a young lay woman seeking work. It was there that she met the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist and later became a member of the Congregation, professing perpetual vows in 2010. For more about Sister Maria David, see Featured Sister.
Read the National Catholic Reporter’s Global Sisters Report.