The Parish of St. Catherine of Siena at Lowton

Tribute to John Humphrey
By Damien Sarsfield

    John and I once went to Manchester to hear a speaker who had been brought into the country by CAFOD to speak at various engagements. Karl Gosper had been a prisoner of conscience, a victim of the Marco tyranny in the Philipines. When we left, Karl Gosper had spoken so well that John said to me: "You could see why Marcos put him in prison couldn’t you".

    I am sure that if John had lived in a country under such circumstances that he would have been imprisonnned too. Evil cannot afford to let goodness like John’s remain free.

    Without John there would have been no CAFOD/Justice and Peace group in St. Catherine’s because he started it. There would have been no Justice and Peace Chapel because he was the prime mover in establishing that too.

    He also started up all the groups in the other parishes in the Deanery, by going there and speaking to the parishioners. When he was on the Archdiocesan Justice and Peace Commission, and especially while he was the Chair of it, he spoke in parishes all over the Archdiocese and probably started many more groups.

    Since John’s funeral I have remembered people I should have told of his death but diidn’t. There are many more people whose lives were touched by just this one area of John’s life. It is so hard remember them all.

    John strove to establish the Kingdon of Heaven on Earth and, to those who knew him, he gave them a glimpse of it.

    Damien Sarsfield

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