Why Fr. Flaviano “Flavie” Villanueva, SVD is someone to look up to
They rose. They lifted others.
A priest and humanitarian whose ministry restores dignity to the homeless, the grieving, and the overlooked through service rooted in compassion.
Restoring dignity. Healing the wounded. Rebuilding lives.
There are people who help the poor by giving them something to eat.
Then there are those who look at a hungry, homeless person and see something that poverty must never be allowed to take away:
human dignity.
Fr. Flaviano “Flavie” Villanueva, SVD, has built his mission around that conviction.
A missionary priest of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), Fr. Flavie founded the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Center in 2015 to serve poor and homeless people in Manila.
But Kalinga was never meant to be simply a feeding program.
It offers food, showers, counseling and livelihood support - practical ways of helping marginalized people rebuild their lives with dignity and self-respect.
Even its name carries its mission. KALINGA stands for Kain-Aral-LIgo-naNG-umAyos - roughly, Eat. Learn. Bathe. Be well.
And those who have been cared for are encouraged to care for others.
Compassion does not have to end with the person who receives it.
It can multiply.
Healing Those Left Behind
Fr. Flavie’s ministry also brought him to families grieving loved ones killed during the Philippines’ war on drugs.
Through Program Paghilom - paghilom means healing - the Arnold Janssen Kalinga Foundation accompanies widows, orphans and other family members as they try to rebuild their lives.
The program includes grief counseling, legal assistance, educational assistance for orphans, livelihood support, capacity building and continuing guidance.
There is also Project Arise.
When leases on public cemetery apartment tombs expire, the remains of victims can be at risk of being lost. Project Arise assists families with the exhumation, examination, cremation, blessing and return of the remains so that their loved ones can finally be given a more permanent resting place.
These are people who could easily have become statistics.
Fr. Flavie’s work insists that they remain human beings with names, families, stories - and dignity.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award
In 2025, Fr. Flavie received one of Asia’s most respected honors for public service: the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation recognized his lifelong mission to uphold the dignity of the poor and the oppressed.
But his response to the honor may tell us even more about him.
He said the award was not really about himself, but about the people who gave his mission meaning - the homeless seeking dignity, mothers searching for loved ones taken by violence, and volunteers who continued showing up to serve.
He turned the spotlight back on them.
A Life Of Redemption
Fr. Flavie’s own life also carries a powerful message.
He has spoken publicly about a troubled youth that included drug dependency before his life took a dramatically different direction.
He eventually entered religious life, became an SVD missionary priest and devoted himself to people whom society can easily dismiss or forget.
Perhaps that is one reason his story speaks so powerfully about second chances.
Your worst chapter does not have to be your last chapter.
A life can be rebuilt.
And sometimes, someone who knows what it means to fall becomes especially determined to help another person stand again.
Why I Chose Fr. Flavie
This choice is a little more personal for me.
I have admired Fr. Flavie’s mission for some time and, in my own small way, have supported it financially.
I used the small donations I received through my singalong channel and passed them on to his mission.
I mention this not because the amount was significant. It wasn’t.
I mention it because I believed in what he was doing.
I believed in a ministry that did not look down on the poor but tried to lift them up.
I believed in giving a homeless person not only something to eat, but the opportunity to recover dignity, self-respect and hope.
And I believe in accompanying people when their suffering is uncomfortable, unpopular or easy for the rest of society to ignore.
Fr. Flavie Villanueva did not become worthy of admiration because he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
The award simply recognized a life already being spent in service of others.
And that is why he is one of my