When Sister Evelyn’s visa expired and she returned to the Philippines in 1992, enrollment again dipped, Whelan said. She came back to Immaculate Conception after 1-1/2 years; up went the enrollment.

This, as Mary, the Immaculate Conception, had been declared as the principal patroness of the Philippines on Sept. 12, 1942 by then Pope Pius XII “upon the request of the bishops in the ...