ON January 24, 1965, Sir Winston Churchill died. I did not like his conservative views on the preservation of the British Empire, but one should give credit where credit is due. As Britain’s prime minister he led his country into a World War that made the difference between freedom as we know it, and the tyrannical imperialism that Adolph Hitler was threatening. On January 24, 2010, Roman Catholic Archbishop Emeritus Lawrence Burke passed on. It is a great coincidence that two brave men who perhaps never met each other would die on January 24, exactly 45 years apart.

The bravery of Archbishop Burke had to do with his consistency in speaking his opinions and more pointedly his Job-like endurance of cancer to his death. In a real way, this was a great demonstration of faith. Archbishop Burke was never afraid to speak his mind and he did not “beat around the bush”. Nor did he like it when anyone else did. He trusted the opinions of those who did not. Every time Archbishop Burke spoke in church, he would give the flock an update on his cancer and we never heard any good news about a reversal of the sickness. He retired in 2008.

Archbishop Burke was a native Jamaican and a member of the Society of Jesus, all of whom are commonly called the Jesuits. Ordained to the priesthood in 1964, he became Jesuit Superior in the 1970s and in 1980 was appointed principal of St George’s College. He spent more than 22 years in Nassau, first as bishop then as archbishop before returning to Jamaica as archbishop of Kingston. His last public act was to ordain two young Jamaican Jesuits, Rohan Tulloch and Michael Davidson, to the priesthood on December 30, 2009. He put up a brave effort that made him look like he was on the rebound.

But at the end of the ordination mass Archbishop Burke told us that he was going for another operation and that the cancer had now taken complete control of his body. He asked the current archbishop Donald Reece to walk with the newly ordained through the aisles as he could not manage it. For the same reason he did not walk out with the procession. My last image of Archbishop Burke is of him blessing the people before he left Holy Trinity Cathedral.

Like Winston Churchill, Archbishop Burke was not afraid of being disliked. As soon as the war was over, Churchill lost power but regained it some years later. While Winston Churchill opposed self-government and independence for the colonies, and uttered very insulting remarks against Mahatma Gandhi, it is very important that we decipher the good from the bad.

One should never honour Churchill as a champion for the rights of the poor in the former colonies because that he was not. Churchill once said that he did not become His Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. He believed in the monarchy so much that before Britain’s Queen Elizabeth came to Jamaica in 1953 Churchill came to Jamaica to inspect the roads and the railway that the queen would be travelling on from Montego Bay to Kingston.

But Churchill did win a war that was very important for the whole world. One of his famous speeches on a battlefield was to say “Never give up” three times. Archbishop Burke faced his cancer in the same way. He was a manifestation of the adage, “It is not what happens to you but how you react that is important.” And he carried out the promise he made when he spoke at his installation as Archbishop of Kingston, that he would use every bit of energy he had to strengthen the church.

I appeared on television with Archbishop Burke after Pope John Paul II died in April 2005. Travelling across Jamaica the following week, I was asked by someone in Discovery Bay if the archbishop and I were father and son. No, we were not related. My father who was an attorney died in 1999. My great-great-grandfather was an African indentured servant (who came after the abolition of slavery) who took the surname of his last employer. Both of my parents converted to Roman Catholicism. And I come from a strong Jamaica College tradition while the archbishop attended and loved St George’s College.

According to Archbishop Burke, his great-grandfather was an indentured servant from India whose original name was Singh. He also took the name of his employer. Further, about 70 per cent of all Roman Catholic priests worldwide and more than 90 per cent of the Roman Catholic priests in the western world are celibate. In the eastern rites of the Catholic Church canon law is different from the west, which allows married men to be ordained as priests but bishops must remain celibate.

It is true that a minority of priests worldwide have violated their vows by having had affairs which resulted in children. And for the sake of those whose minds go to the negative aspects first, I include this. But Archbishop Burke, as far as I know, abided by his vows. May his soul rest in peace.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com