Sister Margaret Lacson
Current Mission Location – Maryknoll Sisters Center, Ossining, New York
Margaret Lacson was born January 1, 1956 to Cecilia (Lizares) Lacson and German D. Lacson in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Philippines. She was the 10th of seventeen children: 7 sisters and 9 brothers. Margaret graduated High School from St. Scholastica’s Academy, Bacolod City in 1974.
Margaret always felt the deep influence of her faith, both as a child and throughout her life. After being educated by the Benedictine Sisters from grade school through college, she received a Bachelor of Music in Piano from St. Scholastica’s College in Manila in 1980 and taught music for several years at St. Scholastica’s Academy. At 34, she decided to enter the Maryknoll Sisters after working as a secretary to Maryknoll Sister Virginia Fabella who was Executive Secretary of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) and coming into contact with the Maryknoll Sisters for the first time. She recalls being moved by the Maryknoll efforts of working “not only for the liberation of the country but of the women, as well.”
Margaret entered the Maryknoll Sisters at their Center in New York August 25, 1990. She pronounced her First Vows on August 15, 1992 at the Center and was assigned to Japan in 1993. She pronounced Final Vows May 30, 1999 in Japan.
After completing a language course in Tokyo, she spent her first several years in Kyoto, volunteering in after-school activities for children coming to Kibo No Ie. In 1996, she relocated to Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture. There she worked to empower battered women at a Catholic relief shelter and, after a period of renewal, ministered to pastoral migrants from the Philippines.
In 2002, she became one of the founding members of the Kalakasan Migrant Women Empowerment Center, which works to stabilize foreign women and their children in Japanese communities. In Tagalog, one of the main native languages of the Philippines, kalakasan means “strength”; as such, its activities are many and focused on empowerment. Its ministries include hosting a crisis intervention program, follow-up care for abused women, networking for improvement in the legal status of migrants and women, and administering a babysitting cooperative for single Filipina mothers, among many others. She has described her work as helping both children and adults “learn to know and love themselves as part-Filipino” in a foreign country. Furthermore, she has also been involved in anti-trafficking movements, to which organizations such as Kalakasan contribute.
While ministering to Filipino migrants, Margaret developed an interfaith connection between Christianity and Buddhism at the San Un Zendo where she began the practice of Zen sitting meditation (Zazen). Zazen has become a vital part of her spirituality. The recent Master who founded the Zendo once said that Zazen helps each one to become a better person just through the practice of sitting meditation. Zazen also helped me to understand and feel the culture of the Japanese people.
In 2022, Margaret was called to the Maryknoll Sisters Center in New York to become the NGO Representative at the United Nations. In her work as representative, Margaret attends conferences at the UN and joins NGO Committees at the UN. Doing this work, Margaret brings the voices of peoples and communities that Maryknoll works with to the UN.