Words of Remembrance: CLEMENT JOHN

(Presented by Carmencita Karagdag, at an ecumenical service to pay tribute to Clement John, sponsored by NCCP, June 16, 2008, La Verne Mercado Ecumenical Center)

Part of my task this morning is to formally introduce Clement John who passed away on June 2. That is hardly a difficult assignment as WCC General Secretary Sam Kobia has already done this in his tribute, so I need only read some passages from his statement. Later we will know him even better when we listen to more tributes from NCCP and Peace for Life. In fact these are very moving and compelling tributes that have tried to encapsulate not only what Clement John stood for but what he meant to us here in the Philippine ecumenical movement.

Let me just say before I read Sam Kobia’s introduction how deeply I personally mourn the passing of Clement John whom I have known and worked with for 25 years. I know him not only as a pioneer in and champion of progressive ecumenism, of active ecumenical engagement in socio-political issues, of meaningful solidarity with the victims of oppression and peoples struggling for liberation. I know him to be the single most important, most committed, most consistent and most generous ecumenical supporter of the Philippine cause in recent history.

There were others, also ecumenical giants in the Christian Conference of Asia and the World Council of Churches, who unflaggingly embraced the Philippine cause and who before him had passed away. Foremost among them was the late Rev. Harry Daniel, former associate general secretary of CCA, who in remembering Clement we also honor today. But in the 70s and 80s at the height of the repressive Marcos regime, the international ecumenical movement was almost unanimous in its support of the Philippine cause, particularly the struggle for human rights and the popular movement to dismantle the repressive Martial Law dictatorship. This is not quite the case today, when in fact the ecumenical movement is fractured by ideological differences on the whole issue of economic globalization and US empire building and when ecumenical donors specially in Europe have shunned many of our local ecumenical initiatives, perceived by them as too political, radical or veering to the Left.

But Clement John was a towering exception, unwavering in his support for the Philippine ecumenical agenda and the larger Philippine struggle for justice and genuine national emancipation. While in CCA and WCC he was generous, almost to a fault, with his increasingly limited funds, always putting the Philippines high on the list of priorities. The remaining funds at his program’s disposal before he left the WCC last year he gave, without me asking for it, to Peace for Life, a Philippine-initiated international solidarity forum. His last wish before his retirement from WCC was to be able to convene a meeting of European partners and NCCP leaders to help resolve the differences and hopefully bring the agencies back on board. This was not to materialize however precisely because of the inhospitable ecumenical environment then prevailing.

In Clement John’s passing, I have thus lost a very dear personal friend, a long-time fellow traveler in the ecumenical journey, a most dependable comrade. But more important the Philippine ecumenical movement and our larger social movement for human rights, justice, peace and liberation have lost an important and invaluable, irreplaceable ally.