The 81-year-old Catholic priest from Australia died on Sunday night (April 20, 2025) in the Philippines, according to Columbans Missionaries Philippines.
Father Brian Gore, a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban, passed away at 7:30 pm at the Holy Mother of Mercy Hospital in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental. Details of his wake and funeral are yet to be announced.
He was known as one of the 'Negros 9' survivors.
The "Negros 9" are the names of nine individuals, including three priests and six lay workers, who were imprisoned in Negros in 1983 during the Marcos regime. They were wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to death. The imprisoned persons were Father Vincente Dangan, Columbans Father Brian Gore and Father Niall O'Brien, Conrado Muhal, Lydio Mangao, Jesus Arzaga, Peter Cuales, Ernesto Tajones, and Geronimo Perez.
During the Marcos dictatorship, these individuals, including Filipino priest Father Vincente Dangan and the Columban priests Father Brian Gore and Father Niall O'Brien, were arrested and imprisoned on trumped-up murder charges. These accusations were part of a government attempt to discredit their work supporting peasant laborers.
The "Negros 9" were falsely accused of killing a police officer, a charge that was used to justify their imprisonment and subsequent death sentence.
The case highlighted the human rights abuses and political persecution that occurred during the Marcos regime.
The trial dominated world headlines for over two years until their case was dismissed due to lack of evidence in 1984.
The "Negros 9" survived their imprisonment and continued their work for social justice, including sustainable agriculture and promoting human rights through initiatives—organic farming and weaving projects.
They promoted an organic farm that houses crops, goats, chickens, and tilapia as part of their mission to promote sustainable agriculture.
Until his death, Gore lived in Bantollinao in the Philippines, in the mountains of Negros Occidental, where he worked with the Negros Nine Human Development Foundation (NNHDF).
The NNHDF Inc. was set up in 2000 to continue the work of total human development started in the dark years of the Marcos dictatorship and in the memory of all those who suffered and died during justice. Their struggle was not in vain. They will not be forgotten.
The NGO helps form and strengthen Christian communities, organic cooperatives, and people’s organizations.
The people who live in the mountains are quite isolated. They live a frugal existence. The children walk seven kilometers to Oringao for primary school or stay in town during the week for high school. Among the farmers living a subsistence lifestyle with limited farming skills, there has been limited food production.
The NNHDF purchased land on the side of the mountain and then began an organic demonstration farm with a multi-purpose building. The farm was developed with contouring, pasture grasses, fish ponds, food crops, a worm farm, a plant nursery, livestock, and carabao, which are hired for plowing. Local farmers came and learned about biodiversity and organic farming, and pretty soon, a cooperative was formed.
The co-op now has more than 100 members from communities around the farm. They meet there to plan income generation projects. Farmers gain individual benefits, but the communal benefits stay in the cooperative to continue improvements on the farm.
One of the major projects they have collaborated on involves moving numerous rocks to construct the "Great Wall of Bantolinao." The "Great Wall of Bantolinao" serves as a stone fence, reclaiming the land for the forest. The members have planted 13,000 trees, which need regular maintenance but are starting to look like a diverse forest with increasing numbers of wildlife appearing.
The co-op is separate from the parish. When the NNHDF started, there was no local parish community. But with the connections the people have made, they have formed a Basic Christian Community and taken San Columbano as their patron.
It was wonderful to observe these people taking on different roles to work together. People walked long distances for several hours to connect. With Gore's help, the people around them had a real sense of community that would enable them to be stronger and use their collective skills to overcome extreme poverty.
In 2001, the Catholic Leader paper described him as a “priest with a burning passion for social justice,” which landed him in a Philippines jail. He worked for the poor.
The Missionary Society of St. Columban was formally founded in Ireland in 1918 and takes its name from St. Columban, Ireland’s sixth-century missionary to Europe. Its missionaries are currently working in at least 20 countries.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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