My dear friends, a renewed word of warm welcome to the Fr Allan’s sisters, Concepcion, Marichu and her husband Atley, who join us today as we say goodbye to their beloved brother and offer our sincere condolences to them and to his dear mother Marciana in the Philippines.
I’m also grateful to the Fr Allan’s friends and the people of his last parishes who supported him in so many ways as he continued faithfully and cheerfully, to serve them as their pastor.
Allan loved this, his adopted country, and the people of his adopted country cared for him in return.
He gave us the very best years of his life and health, and we will always be very grateful for that.
With his Filipino roots, he reminded us that we too are a mission country, we too are a mission, and it is well for us to recall that we need the help of willing missionaries, men and women from elsewhere in the Catholic world, who leave home and kith and kin willingly to preach the Gospel, and to teach us us how to live it well by their words and example.
Fr Allan brought the warm, gentle face of Filipino Catholicism to our diocese, and he never failed to make the discipleship of Christ into something warm, kind and attractive.
He did so without great fuss or fanfare, but rather with a diffidence that was nevertheless a winning one, and always a gentle one.
“As a patient, tenacious, cheerful servant of God, we pray that his sufferings will now be turned into joy in the presence of the Risen Lord.”
As most you know now, Fr Allan struggled with long-term illness, but he did so with great patience and resolve, always in the hope that he would finally be able to have the operation that he required.
This year was the year – at least, this is what he said to me three years ago – that he was told to expect the necessary operation that would mean a newer, easier life for him.
Unhappily, earlier this year it became clear to us that he could not continue on the front line of pastoral life in spite of his best wishes and intentions, and he and I had already agreed before the summer that he would step away from full-time ministry come to live here in the Cathedral, simply resident in the house, while waiting for the hoped for hospital intervention.
In the event, the results of his blood tests became so bad that he was asked to undergo an induced coma to try to improve his situation, but to no avail.
Shortly after that, he died fortified by rites of holy Church, and I’m grateful to Fr Ninian Doohan and the staff of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh for looking after him at the end.
As you may know, all of us clergy here are asked to submit a will and to leave some instructions about what should be done in the event of our death.
Fr Allan, a man characteristically of few words, was similar in his instructions to us here: he left us practically nothing to go on for today.
His only request was that his remains be cremated; he didn’t even say if he wanted them returned home, so we will now leave that to his sisters and his family.
The readings that we have just heard were chosen with the help of his sisters.
The first reading, so familiar to us and yet also so comforting, reminds us in Allan’s case of the “souls of the virtuous” being “in the hands of God”.
His leaving us does indeed, at first, have the feeling of a slow-motion annihilation, something that all of us, and modern medicine, did its best to allay, but to no avail.
And yet, as we think of Allan’s gentle, quiet way, it is not hard for us also to imagine him now at peace. He was gentle in life, and we hope and pray that the good Lord will be gentle with him in death, and lay him to rest.
The Gospel reading too, is a familiar one, and a very appropriate one from the hand of St Luke.
Luke’s gospel is the one we all associate with Jesus portrayed as merciful, as gentle, as close to his people, especially the poor and the weak, with a kind word and gesture.
In today’s passage, we hear the account of Jesus dying on the cross and with his final words being ones of trust and confidence in our merciful God.
It’s surely the hope and prayer of us all that these words were among Alan’s own last words and sentiments, as he came to the end of a long and difficult struggle.
Fr Allan was a kind man, a faithful missionary and a gentle priest.
As a patient, tenacious, cheerful servant of God, we pray that his sufferings will now be turned into joy in the presence of the Risen Lord, and that the good Lord will welcome him today into paradise.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.
Archbishop Leo Cushley, St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, Tuesday 30 June 2026.
