Fr Niall O’Brien, the Irish Columban missionary who was wrongfully imprisoned in the Philippines by the Marcos regime in the 1980s, died twenty years ago on 27th April 2004. According to his former classmate and friend, Fr Cyril Lovett, Fr Niall’s major contribution was to a theology of non-violence, spelled out in his three published books.
In a forthcoming Editorial for the Far East magazine, Fr Cyril writes: “As I reflect on the challenges of our world today, I am convinced that it is this theology, so neglected down through the centuries and yet so central to the life of Jesus, that is the absolutely crucial Christian contribution needed today. Niall’s life and his writings show us the way.”
To mark this important anniversary, Fr Cyril’s Editorial for the Far East magazine on Fr Niall is produced below.
In the Mission Features section of our website, we also have some images and recollections of Fr Niall by Hannah Carter, a friend of Fr Niall’s in the USA, as well as a short reflection on his life by Columban missionary, Fr Brendan O’Sullivan. See: https://columbans.ie/fr-niall-obriens-enduring-influence/
Columban missionary Fr Niall O’Brien was born on 2 August 1939 in Dublin, Ireland. He was ordained in December 1963.
While serving on mission in the Philippines under the Marcos regime in the 1980s he was falsely accused of and detained on charges of multiple murder along with two other priests, Columban Fr Brian Gore, an Australian, and Fr Vicente Dangan, a Filipino, as well as six lay workers: the so-called ‘Negros Nine’.
They were falsely accused of the murders of Mayor Pablo Sola of Kabankalan and four companions.
The case received widespread publicity in Ireland and Australia. Journalist Charlie Bird interviewed Fr O’Brien in his overcrowded prison cell for RTÉ Television.
When US President Ronald Reagan visited Ireland in 1984, he was asked by RTÉ how he could help the missionary priest’s situation. A phone call the next day from the Reagan administration to Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines resulted in Marcos offering a pardon to Fr O’Brien and his co-accused.
Rather than accept a pardon, which would imply guilt, the priests had the charges dropped against them in return for agreeing to leave the country. They were released on 3 July 1984.
In 1986, the Marcos regime fell in the People Power revolution and Fr O’Brien returned to the country he considered home shortly afterwards.
Fr Niall O’Brien died in Pisa, Italy on 27th April 2004, aged 64.
Fr Niall O’Brien saying Mass in jail with the Negros Nine.
Remembering Niall by Fr Cyril Lovett
I was blessed to be a classmate and a dear friend of the late Fr Niall O’Brien. He was a wonderful person, artistic, intelligent, an excellent writer, a man of deep spirituality with an infectious sense of humour. He had a gift for learning languages and quickly became proficient in the dialect of Negros in the Philippines. He was zealous in serving people, deepening their faith, helping them make the Bible their own, and organizing Basic Christian Communities. He wrote, “You have a Christian Community when you lay down at night knowing that in your village no one is sick who is not being attended, no one is persecuted who is not being helped, no one is lonely who is not being visited”.
Niall learned from the people: he wrote, “… the more I put myself above the people the more I locked myself out of the way of grace, and the more I melded into the community as another human being, notwithstanding my special task as a priest, the more I became a disciple”. Above all, Niall could not turn a blind eye to the widespread injustice and violence which threatened his people. He wrote, “I felt that a lot of talk about prayer, yoked with little justice, was the best formula for producing atheism in the next generation”. The alternative seemed to be to either do nothing, or to respond to violence with violence.
Niall advocated a third way: the way of active non-violence inspired by the life of Jesus. He trained his parishioners to do things that were within their capacity, but which stretched their courage even a little. And so, he led them in their thousands to protest against violence and injustice. Embarking on a long protest walk, showing solidarity with the people of a neighbouring parish, was a way of confronting the authorities which was legal. Many people were reborn to a sense of their own dignity on such protest walks. This led to Niall’s own imprisonment and to being falsely accused of murder. He feared that he would be assassinated while in prison.
In prison he also wrote, “We asked the Carmelite Sisters to make special stoles for each of us. The design showed a dove hovering over barbed wire, looking for a place to land. A hand has grasped the barbed wire, making a spot for the dove to land. So it is, we felt that in the growing spiral of anger, hate, and war, some people must grasp the sharp barbs and absorb the pain, and thereby give the dove of peace a space to descend upon the earth”.
Niall’s major contribution was to a theology of non-violence, spelled out in his three published books. As I reflect on the challenges of our world today, I am convinced that it is this theology, so neglected down through the centuries and yet so central to the life of Jesus, that is the absolutely crucial Christian contribution needed today. Niall’s life and his writings show us the way.
Remembering Fr Niall O’Brien, Columban missionary, priest, peacemaker, prisoner, writer and friend by Fr Michael Martin. To purchase this see: https://columbans.ie/product/remembering-fr-niall-obrien/