Why Fr. Dennis Gabriel “Gabby” Lamug-Nañawa, SJ is someone to look up to
They rose. They lifted others.
A Jesuit priest and environmental leader whose life of service connects faith, community, and care for creation.
Some Filipinos inspire us through great discoveries, awards or achievements.
Others inspire us by the places they are willing to go, the people they choose to stand beside, and the risks they are willing to take in serving them.
Fr. Dennis Gabriel “Gabby” Lamug-Nañawa, SJ is one of them.
Before becoming a priest, Fr. Gabby studied Manufacturing Engineering and Management at De La Salle University. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1994 and was ordained a priest in 2005.
Then came the mission that would profoundly shape his life:
Cambodia.
The beginning was difficult.
He was far from home and could not yet speak Khmer. The language barrier left him feeling isolated.
His mother, Linda, recalls one small but beautiful detail from that period: beneath his pillow, Fr. Gabby kept his Lola’s rosary.
It became a source of hope and courage during a lonely time.
But instead of retreating into the familiarity of the Jesuit community, Fr. Gabby did something remarkable.
He left the “bahay pare” and went to live with a poor Cambodian family.
He wanted to learn Khmer faster - not simply from books, but by living among the people.
Eventually, he learned to speak and write their language.
And Cambodia ceased simply to be the country to which he had been assigned.
It became a people he loved.
Fr. Gabby would spend some 17 years there as a missionary, much of his ministry involving people on society’s margins, including persons with disabilities.
And from that work came another realization:
You cannot truly care for poor communities without also caring for the land, forests, rivers and ecosystems upon which their lives depend.
In 2013, Fr. Gabby and two young Cambodians helped begin what became the Ecology Program of Jesuit Service Cambodia.
It started simply - with a nursery growing native Cambodian trees.
But those seedlings grew into something much larger: work involving forest conservation, renewable energy, environmental education and protection of ecosystems such as the Mekong River and Tonle Sap upon which millions of people depend.
And Fr. Gabby’s environmentalism was certainly not confined to meetings and speeches.
His mother remembers an extraordinary episode.
For more than a month, Fr. Gabby lived in the forest with Cambodians working to stop illegal logging.
They had very little food. They drank river water. They helped apprehend illegal loggers and confiscate power saws.
There was real personal risk.
Yet protecting those forests meant protecting the communities whose livelihoods depended upon them.
That helps explain something fundamental about Fr. Gabby:
For him, caring for people and caring for creation are not two separate missions.
When forests disappear, poor families lose livelihoods.
When waterways are damaged, communities lose food and water.
And when creation is exploited, those with the least often suffer first.
There is another striking symbol of this philosophy in a vestment associated with his Cambodian ministry.
On it, the crucified Christ is depicted with one leg.
In a country where war and landmines left many people with amputations, the image identifies Christ with Cambodians living with disabilities.
The wounded Christ stands with wounded people.
And, in Fr. Gabby’s ministry, with a wounded creation as well.
His responsibilities eventually extended far beyond Cambodia. He became Country Coordinator of Jesuit Service Cambodia and later led the Reconciliation with Creation network of the Jesuit Conference of Asia Pacific from 2020 until August 2026.
Today, his mission has brought him back to the Philippines.
He serves as the Philippine Jesuit Province’s Assistant for Ecological Justice and has also been serving as Grade School Chaplain at Ateneo de Naga University.
And after all those years of missionary and environmental work, there is something wonderfully endearing about what his mother told me he did just last July.
For the Feast of St. Ignatius, Fr. Gabby dressed up as St. Ignatius so the grade-school children could become more familiar with the founder of the Jesuits.
From confronting illegal logging in Cambodian forests...
to making a saint come alive for little children.
Perhaps that, too, tells us something about the man.
Why I Chose Him
Fr. Gabby is not a household name.
And perhaps that is precisely why I wanted him in this series.
We sometimes associate greatness with fame, titles and awards.
But there is another kind of greatness:
To go where you are needed.
To learn another people’s language.
To live among the poor rather than merely serve them from a distance.
To walk beside persons with disabilities.
To plant trees.
To enter a forest and put yourself at risk to defend it.
To teach children.
And to spend your life reminding us that caring for our common home is also caring for one another.
That, to me, is a Filipino worth looking up to.