Australian missionary Sister Patricia Fox will leave the country tomorrow after the Bureau of Immigration denied her application for a temporary visa extension for violating her stay in the country.
“‹The nun, who vowed to return to the Philippines after President Rodrigo Duterte’s term, is included in the bureau’s Black List Order which will prohibit her from coming back to the country.
In a statement, the National Union of People’s Lawyers said that Fox’s passport was confiscated on Wednesday and would be given back soon as she would be leaving through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
She will be considered an overstaying alien should the nun refuse to leave after her visa expired on Nov. 3.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Fox’s voluntary departure had nothing to do with her deportation case.
“Her voluntary departure, if true, is without prejudice to the resolution of her deportation case. If she wins, then her name will be removed from the blacklist,” he said in a statement.
The 71-year-old nun has sought to stay in the Philippines, where she has resided for nearly three decades.
The BI had ordered her deportation for violating the terms of her visa by participating in political activities.
Fox denied the allegations, saying her missionary work involved touching base with farmers and ordinary workers.
The NUPL president, lawyer Catherine Panguban, said Sr. Fox would leave the Philippines with a clear conscience that she had done nothing wrong and illegal during her 27 years of stay in the country.
“After Sr. Patricia Fox’s six months of arduous battle in the legal and political arena since her illegal arrest and detention on April 16, the Bureau of Immigration finally denies today her application for the extension of her temporary visitor’s visa and requires her to leave the Philippines on November 3,” the NUPL said.
“She is and will always be loved by the Filipino people. On the contrary, it is the Philippine government, known for its notorious human rights record, who is in the losing end,” the NUPL added.