The St. Francis Xavier Cathedral in Kabankalan City was overflowing with people at the funeral mass for Fr. Brian Gore, the Australian missionary called the “poor man’s priest”, Monday afternoon, April 28.
Many at those at the Cathedral also accompanied Gore’s funeral cortege up to the Kabankalan Catholic Cemetery, San Carlos Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, said.
Gore, 81, suffered from pneumonia, and died at the Holy Mother of Mercy Hospital in Kabankalan City on Easter Sunday, April 20.
Alminaza, Kabankalan Bishop Louie Galbines and about 70 priests participated in the concelebrated mass.
Alminaza, who was the main celebrant, said Pope Francis caught the world’s attention when he set into motion – in the spirit of synodality – various significant paradigm shifts.
“Go to the peripheries and serve the poor…smell like your sheep”, the Pope preached, which is what Fr. Gore and the Columban Missionaries had done when they came to Negros Island long before Pope Francis exemplified these by his life and ministry, Alminaza said.
“Fr Brian by nature was an extrovert who loved to be with people. He allowed himself to be taught by people. He listened. Immersed himself in their situations. He smelled like his sheep,” Alminaza said.
Gore, with other Columban missionaries organized Basic Christian Communities in the peripheries like Barangay Oringao in Kabankalan and for that he was tagged as a “communist” by the powerful, Alminaza said
Gore for standing up for the poor was red-tagged and jailed on trumped up murder charges, Alminaza said.
At his funeral the people whom he stood up for and whose lives he had uplifted came to pay their last respects.
Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Lacson, in an interview, said “Fr. Gore served his community well, you can see that in those who had visited his wake.”
He promised Fr. Gore that he would see to the concreting of a road leading to the Negros Nine Human Development Foundation weavers’ livelihood project that he founded in Oringao, and will fulfill that promise, Lacson said.*