‘My friends, that is a question some of us have to ask ourselves every day.’ Unlike the other speakers during the week-long Church Conference, he didn’t use the lectern but strode up and down in front of them, cracking jokes and gesticulating with his hands and occasionally laughing at himself. It was very different to anything Cecilia had heard before. She’d known nothing about poor sugar farmers in the Philippines, but he made them come alive for her. His descriptions and anecdotes let her feel what it would be like to be in the sweltering heat of Manila, amid the open drains and mosquitoes. ‘Being on the side of the poor is not only dangerous,’ the priest went on, ‘but it is beset with all kinds of contradictions. Is it right to baptise the landowner’s child and officiate at his daughter’s wedding when we know that he is behind the disappearance and death of a local union organiser? What do you think?’ he asked the audience.
