Philippines Missionary Receives Humanitarian Award

Father Shay Cullen, a Dublin-born Columban Missionary based in the Philippines since 1969, has been given the 2016 Hugh O’Flaherty Humanitarian Award.
Cullen (pictured above with his students) has worked tirelessly over a lifetime to promote human rights, justice, and peace, with a particular drive towards ending child exploitation and abuse of children in the Philippines. In 1974, Cullen set up the PREDA Foundation to help child victims and trafficked women who were being exploited in the sex trade.
The award was set up to honor the life of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish prelate who, based in the Vatican from 1938 until 1960, saved over 6,500 lives from the Nazi forces in Rome during WWII. ♦