Nuns Who Sheltered Cory Aquino in 1986 Denounce 'Maid in Malacanang'

Cebu's Carmelite nuns on Tuesday denounced as "reprehensible" a scene from the film "Maid in Malacañang", which they said, failed to portray them accurately.

The scene showed a bespectacled woman in a yellow dress, the fashion signature of the late former President Corazon Aquino, playing mah jong with a group of nuns. The film is billed as retelling of the Marcos family's last hours in the Palace before they were driven to exile, as told from their prespective.

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"The nuns are not wearing our brown religious habit. But if these pictures are portraying the events of February 1986, then the allusion to the Carmelite Order in Cebu is too obvious for anyone to not see," the Carmelite Monastery said in a statement published by Cebu Daily News.

Film director Daryl Yap in response urged the Carmelite sisters to watch the film, saying there was no need for them to be alarmed if they were "ostentatious about details".  He said when the Marcoses fled the country, Aquino was not in a monastery, and there's also nothing wrong with playing  mah jong. 

The nuns said the film's production team failed to do the "elementary diligence" of getting the side of the sisters from that time in 1986, many of whom are "very much alive and mentally alert" including the sister superior. 

"The attempt to distory history is reprehensible. Depicting the nuns as playing mah-jong with Cory Aquino is malicious. It would suggest that while the fate of the country was in peril, we could afford to leisurely play games," the nuns said.

"The truth was that we were then praying, fasting and making other forms of sacrifices for peace in this country and for the people's choice to prevail," the nuns said. "We are praying for the unity of Filipinos. But tis unity can only be built on truth and not on historical distortion," they said. 

Actress Giselle Sanchez, who played the woman in yellow in the viral scene, said that "now that the coin has flipped" and that it was high time to give the Marcoses "a chance to tell their side of the story".

“Maid in Malacañang is NOT a bio-pic. This is a story of a family," Sanchez said, quoting Yap.