Fr. Luis Ruiz Suárez and Macao Caritas

Fr. Luis Ruiz Suárez was a Spanish-born Jesuit priest and missionary who founded the Mateus Ricci Social Centre that had become the Macao Caritas of today. Throughout his lifetime, he fought for the welfare of the underprivileged (the elderly, disabled and the mentally handicapped) and had delivered adequate social care and services for them.

By the mid-1980s, Macao Caritas began offering nursing care to the lepers in the Dajin Island of Taishan city in Guangdong province and those in Shaanxi, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces of China.

Fr. Luis Ruiz Suárez suffered from diabetes at old age and became wheelchair-bound later in life. Despite his immobile state, he still shuttled between Macao and China to serve the marginal groups (lepers, HIV and AIDS victims) over there. On 26 July, 2011, Fr. Luis Ruiz Suárez passed away at the Conde de São Januário Hospital of Macao and his body was buried in the St. Miguel Arcanjo Cemetery.