Fr. Flavie Villanueva is Ramon Magsaysay 2025 awardee
Fr. Flaviano “Flavie” Antonio Villanueva, one of the most outspoken critics of the drug war of former President Rodrigo Duterte, has been named one of this year’s three Ramon Magsaysay awardees.
The other winners are a nonprofit foundation in India that worked to bring poor girls to schools in more than 30,000 villages and a Maldives diver who sparked a movement to save her tropical archipelago nation from plastic pollution with massive cleanups and recycling.
In an announcement on Sunday, the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation (RMAF) cited Villanueva for confronting the “harsh realities faced by the vulnerable” and moving them toward a “culture of healing.”
The priest who faced death threats and a sedition charge will join the ranks of 13 others in the Catholic clergy honored by the foundation in the past six decades for going “far beyond the walls of their churches,” pioneering social justice initiatives and helping the vulnerable sectors of society.
RMAF trustee Josephine Lok said “Flaviano’s work is marked by commitment to truth and justice, grounded in a belief that healing begins when we acknowledge pain and confront injustice directly.”
Speaking to the Inquirer, Villanueva described the recognition as humbling, but said it made his call to mission even more pressing.
“Big thanks to God—in the words of the Blessed Mother, my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord—for this chance, although the mission must continue and should be pursued even more,” he said.
Transformation
A confessed drug user who recovered from addiction and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2006, Villanueva uses his transformation “to prove that even the most wayward and destitute can find redemption and renewal.”
He founded the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in Tayuman, Manila, on July 16, 2015, to enable the poorest of the poor and homeless to recreate their lives and “reclaim their self-worth” with dignity.
The RMAF highlighted Villanueva’s leadership, saying he fed not only the hungry and broken but also their souls, providing food, shelter, clean water and bathing facilities.
At the onset of Duterte’s drug war in 2016, Villanueva launched Project “Paghilom” to help provide funeral, legal and psychosocial assistance for victims.
His outspokenness, however, led the government to file a sedition charge against him. While the case was dropped in 2023, “the death threats never stopped,” the foundation said.
In March this year, Duterte was arrested on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for murder as a crime against humanity over the widespread drug-related killings during his presidency and as Davao City mayor.
‘Self-sustaining model’
Also named a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee is the Foundation to Educate Girls Globally.
A nonprofit organization, it is the first from India to be so honored. It helps provide education for girls in rural areas by harnessing government and community resources.
Educate Girls was established in 2007 by Safeena Husain, who returned home after graduating from the London School of Economics and working in the United States.
“Illiterate girls are forced to marry early, have children, and work—while culturally privileged males go to school,” the RMAF said. “Given their limited horizons, only a lifetime of penury and servitude awaits most of these women.”
Starting in the largest state of Rajasthan, where girls have the highest illiteracy rate, the organization identified the most vulnerable communities and brought unschooled or out-of-school girls into the classroom until they were able to acquire credentials for higher education and employment.
From 50 pilot village schools, more than 30,000 villages across India later benefited from the program, involving over two million girls with a high retention rate.
“By mobilizing parents, thousands of local volunteers, and government systems, they have built a self-sustaining model that brings girls not only back to school, but forward into opportunity,” the RMAF said.
War vs plastic pollution
The third awardee, Shaahina Ali, grew up in the Maldives and witnessed how the South Asian archipelago and popular tourist destination became threatened by plastic pollution on land and at sea with rapid urbanization.
“As a diver, photojournalist and diving instructor, Ali often came literally face to face with the tides of trash clouding up the once-pristine waters of her islands, leaving behind swaths of dead fish and dying corals,” the RMAF said.
“She has made it her mission to ensure the next generation not only understands the environment but feels deeply responsible for it,” it added.
In 2015, Ali linked up with a nongovernment group to start an antipollution project and turn waste plastic into a resource for livelihood. Working with volunteers and businesses, her group, Parley Maldives, has undertaken massive cleanups and information and recycling campaigns “that have not only caught much of the physical waste but just as crucially intervened where it matters—in the minds of Maldivians and tourists who now recognize and avoid the problems plastic poses,” the RMAF said.
“When the world feels like it is falling apart, these transformative leaders refuse to forget. They repair what was abandoned and insist on a future that not only remembers, but ignites the way forward,” it noted.
Named after the popular Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash, the Ramon Magsaysay Awards honor “greatness of spirit” through selfless service to people across Asia.
The winners, who are scheduled to give public lectures in Manila from Nov. 4 to Nov. 6, will be recognized at the Metropolitan Theater on Nov. 7. —WITH A REPORT FROM AP
