By Niall O’ Brien mssc

On Monday, October 9, at 7:00 pm at Daytona Beach in Florida, while crossing the road, Fr. Eamonn Gill was hit by a truck and killed instantly.

Fr. Aemonn spent nearly half a century here in the island of Negros. In a few days time he had planned to come back to the Philippines. Eamonn first came here in 1950. He was appointed to the parish of Ma-ao Central. The young, dedicated, active priest was immediately loved by the people and to this day families like the Hilados, the Wrights, the Aranetas, Coscolluelas and Hagads know him and love him.

After I came to the Philippines I got to know him because he was appointed to the new mountain parish of Magballo. There were no roads up there and he had to build the house and the church. I often visited him in Magballo and his concern was for the peasants who were gradually being forced off their land because they didn’t have any written titles though they had lived on these lands since the beginning. All they could do was point to the tree they had planted twenty years previously. At one stage he actually went to Vice-President Fernando Lopez in Manila to plead their cause. And he succeeded and if I recall correctly bloodshed was avoided. This was, of course, in the days of the Federation of Free Farmers led by Gerry Montemayor. That was all new to us then. Up till then a priest’s job was mainly to get the people to go to Mass and the sacraments. Eamonn was one of the first to see that human rights was an integral part of the Church’s doctrine of Vatican II. Such was his integrity that even people who were on the other side of the land dispute became dear friends of his and remain so until the present day.

He became our superior for two terms. As such he backed us strongly on the needs and the rights of the poor. I remember one time at the meeting of the Columbans where we had decided to get more involved in human rights and the Church of the poor, I remember him standing up and saying, “Well, lads do you realize, if we do this we’ll have less for ourselves and are you willing to accept that?” We voted yes and went ahead. When some of us were in prison, he joined the long protest march walking some eighty kilometers all the way from Himamaylan to Bacolod with his people and was magnificently supportive of us all the time.

Next he was appointed to Sipalay and took the same strong stand there during very difficult times after the people Power Revolution of EDSA. Then he was sent to Himamaylan. Those were the days before General Jarque joined the NPA and in those days he was bombing them and the civilians. Tens of thousands of civilians came down from the mountains and Fr. Eamonn fed them and housed them and spent astronomical sums on medicines for them.

While he was parish priest of Himamaylan, he and his assistant Fr. Eddie Allen, then in his 80’s were vilified by the military. One town official actually organized demonstrations against them implying that his help to the refugees was closet support for the NPA. That was a load of nonsense because his defense of the peasants who were being bombed out of their homes had nothing to do with his relationship or non-relationship with the rebels in the mountains. That was the time of the De Los Santos massacre when he actually went to Manila and personally presented to Cory Aquino his own devastating photos and a full report of what had happened. It was about that massacre that the well-known book Dead Season, by Alan Berlow was written and many good things are said about Eamonn Gill in that book.

His last appointment was to Henrietta Village. And there he earned the love of the people for his generosity, his humor, his faithfulness to his job as a priest and his diplomatic skills in solving the huge squatter problem between a group of parishioners and Gaisano. That was one squatter problem in Bacolod which was not solved by bulldozers. Without him it would not have been solved the way it was. It was one of his last acts. He never indulged in public polemics or grandstanding. He quietly got the job done.

Eamonn hadn’t a mean bone in his body and I never saw him do a mean act. For that, I sort of envied him because his generosity just came naturally to him. His sermons on justice were clear, courageous and humorous. Some wealthy people knew him and loved him and came to his little church in Henrietta while their wives might have gone to more fashionable places and they knew they were possibly going to hear something which they didn't want to hear but they also knew it  would be fair-minded bitterness and with humor.

Eamonn was the youngest of a family of 12. Much loved by his sister and brothers and nieces and nephews who urged him to come home and to be with them when he retired. In the last couple of years he spent a lot of time at the bedside of his sick relatives. I know that many people who will read this article will be filled with sadness at the loss of such a rare human being. He was my lifelong friend and I valued his friendship because I knew I was with someone better than myself. He was my ideal Christian. In a few days time he planned to come back to the Philippines and I had a room prepared for him here and a car and driver ready.

Negros was blessed to have him for those years and blessed too in one particular extraordinary trait of his – his ability to be your friend and yet to disagree with you. He had a favorite phrase which used to exasperate me no end. It was “On the other hand ...” We both participated in committee meetings and frequently when an opinion would be given, Eamonn’s voice would be heard, “On the other hand..." When he was talking to a wealthy friend who complained about the fact that the laborers were lazy or whatever, Eamonn would say, “But on the other hand..." and when he spoke to high up members of the NPA whom he knew and remained friends with, they would be describing some terrible atrocities Eamonn would agree but you could be sure he’d say, “On the other hand...”and try and give the other point of view. That is a rare thing in our culture here where friends tells you only what you want to hear. Not so Eamonn and he would do it without being offensive or hurtful. Something for us all to learn from. Just the other night at dinner with a friend in Manila, she asked me how are things in Negros and why were there still insurgency, I wished Eamonn was there to give her a franker answer than I was prepared to give and to use his old phrase, “On the other hand...”

The words of his pastor in Florida express how we all feel at this moment. He said, “He was so kind and funny and warm and caring that there aren’t enough words to describe how I feel about Eamonn.”

Will we ever see his like again?