A REFLECTION ON FAITH, GROWTH AND MISSION
Columban Fr Brian Gore and I first met on March 1, 1962, when fifteen of us Spiritual Year students gathered at Burnham Beeches, the former home of the Nicholas family, at Sassafras in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. Trained by three Columban priests, together we began our Columban journey. We saw it as a missionary adventure, and work in Asia was in most of our sights.
As young men ranging in age from 17 to 21, we came from every Australian state and New Zealand. Our ethnic makeup and family work backgrounds varied greatly.
Most of us were straight out of school with little worldly experience apart from what we’d absorbed from family, hometown or parish.
Playing Aussie Rules football became the first arena where we began learning about each other’s character. The game was new for most of us, but Brian knew it well, coming from Perth. Tall with a frame to match, he taught us some skin-breaking first lessons.
It was obvious to us that Brian was a doer, his eyes ever flashing about to see what needed to be done - be it cleaning the dishes properly after a meal, providing haircuts or preparing the chapel for Mass.
I got to know Brian during seven years in the seminary. Six of our fifteen were ordained on the same day, June 29, 1968, in five states. It was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Missionary Society of St Columban.
I visited Brian at work in the Philippines on my way to South Korea, where I was to work. I saw how newly formed Basic Christian Communities were emerging on Negros Island and empathized with their work, inspired by the call of Vatican II to new mission engagement with the major issues of the times (Church in the World 10).
Intellectually, Brian grew under the influence of Niall O’Brien and other Columbans in what came to be called “ortho-praxis”. In other words, Brian was part of local groups of Catholics who were growing a new way of being church. Doctrine, interpretation of Scripture, and public commitment to social justice were all “developing”, as Cardinal Newman had called it a century before.
If you want to care for the poor, look after the environment was an official Columban Society commitment at its 1988 Assembly. This development of “ortho-practice” emerged under people like Fr Tom Berry, Columban Fr Sean McDonagh and Fr Denis Edwards and has been endorsed by every pope since Vatican II. Brian acted on it. It seems provident that he and Pope Francis died only a day apart.
The Columban Society recognised Brian’s leadership skills when it appointed him Australia/New Zealand Regional Superior.
Over two terms, he chose Columbans Fr Reg Howard and Fr Jim Mulroney to assist him. A decade later, he took up that role in the Philippines region. His ready smile encouraged lay staff and Columban priests alike to engage enthusiastically with Columban mission work. It was his idea to send certificates to long-time mission supporters.
Brian travelled Australia and New Zealand to reach parish groups focused on education, women, justice or peace dialogue forums. He engaged the secular media to promote a wider understanding of the Church’s mission in the world. Brian grew in this area, tutored by journalist Shane Mooney and friends, from the time of the Negros Nine affair in the early 1980s. He was the focus of Columban efforts to make ordinary Australians aware of the impact of capitalist-backed military dictatorships. Street theatre in Melbourne's CBD saw campaigners behind mock prison bars. Columban Colin McLean, Presentation Sisters and Christian Brothers were key to this awareness raising.
Brian grew through disappointments. He learnt to live with some church people who ridiculed him as an intellectual lightweight. Some publicly criticized his promotion of economic honesty within church institutions; others were soured by his seemingly harsh decisions as a leader. A few people twisted the aims of the local social justice programme to revert to a mentality of, I’m all right, Jack.
Brian was always a realist. He faced Messianic temptations and learned when to stop pushing. In the last decade, he returned to Negros. Despite growing physical limitations, he continued to inspire the work of two major educational centres, where he selected competent leadership teams to run both a diocesan formation centre and an ecologically focused residential centre to help farming families. He valued economic realities. The centre showed how to make organic fertilizers to save money and helped create markets for local weavers as supplementary income.
I have no intention of making a saint out of Brian. He had his own personality and faults, like the rest of us. However, I am ever conscious that, over decades, he constantly grew as a person, believer and missionary. Most of us get stuck at some point in life, but Brian seemed to keep open to where God was leading him.
It is a source of great joy for me to have witnessed this quality of constant growth in his life. It is a great source of gratitude to appreciate how God works with each of our personalities, gifting us at the right time (Lk 2:52).
Columban Fr Charles Rue lives in Canberra, Australia.
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - June 2025
