Sister Rebecca G. Macugay
Current Ministry Location: Philippines
Sister Rebecca has reached so many people around the world in so many different capacities. She worked primarily in training others towards an awareness and understanding of their life realities. She facilitated their active participation in the shaping of lives and communities.
Rebecca Garcia Macugay was born November 7, 1946 in Cabatuan, Isabela, Philippines to Geronima C. (Garcia) Macugay and Severo C. Macugay. She had 3 brothers and 3 sisters.
Rebecca graduated from The University of Santo Tomas High School Department in Manila, Philippines in 1961. She earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Medical Technology in the same university in 1965. She then worked as a Medical Technologist at St. Therese Hospital in Waukegan, Ill, USA, and received her MT(ASCP) certification in 1968.
Rebecca entered the Maryknoll Sisters June 27, 1969 at the Philippine novitiate. She pronounced First Vows April 2, 1973 in Mwanza, Tanzania and her final vows November 15,1980 in Nairobi, Kenya.
Assigned to Tanzania in 1970, Becky was one of a team that set up the Bugando Hospital, a Regional Teaching Hospital in Mwanza, Tanzania. She trained lab technicians and taught Microbiology in the Nursing School. In 1975, she went to Kenya, where she served in a variety of ministries, including high-school teacher, youth worker in a non-school setting, and Development Education trainer for adult literacy teachers in various Catholic dioceses in the country.
After returning to the United States 1985-89, Sister Rebecca earned a Master’s in Education degree with a focus on Development Education from the Center for International Studies of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1986. She served several years as vocation minister for the Congregation before returning to Kenya.
As part of a pastoral team in Bura-Tana, Kenya, Sister Rebecca coordinated the training of village health workers, trained youth and women leaders, and participated in small Christian communities. During her year in Nairobi, she and another Maryknoll Sister worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service of East Africa in training women refugees in business management skills. She helped to set up a day center for people living with HIV/AIDS in a parish in Buru-Buru Estate.
Sister Rebecca was assigned to Namibia in 1997 and teamed up with another Maryknoll Sister to establish the Christian Development Education Program of the Rundu Vicariate, in the northeastern part of the country. They trained church personnel from the different parishes, enabling them to work more effectively with their communities, especially at a time when the country was inundated with HIV-AIDS. In the national diaconate formation program, they worked with deacon candidates and their wives facilitate interactive methodologies in catechetics.
In 2000-2005, Kleinmond, South Africa, Sister Rebecca worked with the Cape Town Grail, an international women’s organization, in the Training for Transformation Program, a Leadership Development Program for women development practitioners from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Returning to the U.S. in 2005, Sister Rebecca joined the Development Department of the Maryknoll Sisters as Mission Projects Funding director, she worked with grant-makers and in the cultivation of major donors to support the mission projects of Maryknoll Sisters overseas, as well as special projects and needs at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York. Also in 2005, she was interviewed for the Lives of Service series. During this Mission Service, Rebecca helped coordinate the logistics planning for the Maryknoll Sisters’ Inter Assembly Conference held in Bolivia in 2006.
In October 2008, Sister Rebecca was elected vice-president of the Maryknoll Sisters’ Congregational Leadership Team from 2009 to 2015.
For her Renewal in 2015, Sister Rebecca attended a three- month course on Cosmology and its underpinnings on Eco-Spirituality at the Dominican Center for Ecology in Wicklow, Ireland. In the same year, she was a member of the Maryknoll UN NGO representatives at the COP 21 Summit in Paris, France. Both experiences awakened in her a deepened understanding of the Creation story as God’s incarnation in our world and beyond as well as our being co-creators in this loving and grace-filled endeavor.
In 2017, Rebecca was assigned to Panama where she teamed up with another Maryknoll Sister to work as pastoral agents in a peri-urban district parish of Las Mañanitas. In one of the sub-parishes, they worked with the parishioners to establish a pre-school with a nature-based curriculum.
In 2022-2025, Rebecca was served as Coordinator of the Rogers Community of the Maryknoll Center.
Sister Rebecca is currently assigned to the Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary in Baguio City, Philippines.