People Power’s Philippine Saint: Corazon Aquino

Political sainthood is a gift from heaven with a Cinderella deadline: once midnight strikes, you’re a pumpkin. But for Corazon Aquino, the former Philippine President, who died Aug. 1 at 76, midnight always threatened but never struck. In a world where virtue never guarantees success, she was a good woman whose goodness alone proved just enough to save her country.

Corazon Cojuangco was born into one of the wealthiest families in the islands. Fated to be married off in one dynastic match or other, she was courted by and fell in love with Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., an ambitious journalist turned politician whose own family was as illustrious though not quite as wealthy as her baronial clan. The marriage would help propel Benigno’s career: “Cory” became a cipher at his side, the highborn wife whose social ministrations at political sessions flattered her husband’s supporters. His popularity inevitably drew the ire of Ferdinand Marcos, who threw the opposition leader in jail on assuming dictatorial power in 1972.

Cory, who smuggled Ninoy’s messages out of prison and raised funds for the opposition, would have remained his faithful instrument were it not for the fateful events of Aug. 21, 1983. Returning to the Philippines after three years of exile in the U.S., Ninoy was shot dead before he could set foot on the tarmac of Manila’s international airport. His devout and stoic Roman Catholic widow became both the incarnation of a pious country that had itself suffered silently through more than a decade of autocratic rule–and, against her will, its greatest hope. Millions lined Benigno’s funeral route, repeating his wife’s name as if saying the rosary: “Cory, Cory, Cory.”

While Filipinos already saw her as a leader, she declined the role until November 1985, when Marcos called snap presidential elections to reaffirm his mandate. Though hampered by the government’s near monopoly of the media, the Aquino campaign attracted millions of fervent supporters, all decked out in yellow, the reluctant candidate’s favorite color. And when Marcos cheated her of victory in the February 1986 vote, the outcry was tremendous. Millions of protesters crammed the streets in a manifestation of what she called People Power, chanting the now familiar mantra: “Cory, Cory, Cory.” Nuns armed with rosaries knelt in front of tanks, stopping them in their tracks.

After four days of rebellion, Marcos was whisked off to exile in Hawaii, and Aquino was proclaimed President. TIME named her Woman of the Year in 1986, the first female to hold the distinction on her own since the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth in 1952.

To govern the Philippines, she needed all the goodwill she could muster. The country was one breath away from the economic morgue, its democracy built on reeds. Aquino survived eight coup attempts. She was convinced that her presidency was divinely inspired, even as her political foes mocked her piety. “If the country needs me,” she said, “God will spare me.” She proved God right and her critics wrong. In 1992 she passed the presidency to the democratically elected Fidel Ramos.

Every so often she’d emerge from private life to warn her successors to behave. She participated in another People Power revolt that deposed the inept government of Joseph Estrada, and she joined demonstrations to warn current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo not to rewrite the constitution to extend her term. Whenever the country appeared to be in a crisis, Cory Aquino rose to remind Filipinos that they once astonished the world with their bravery–and that they could do it again. In a remarkable tribute, Marcos’ son and daughter went to her wake. Vengeance, Aquino said, was never her priority. “I just wanted to restore our democracy, to continue Ninoy’s fight.”