Rector who `stood by his parish' wins praise from Orangemen

Drumcree 1998 had its Rev William Bingham. Hero to so many when on Sunday, July 12th, last year, the morning the three Quinn children died, he said that walking down a few yards of road was not worth the deaths of three little boys.

Mr Bingham's words did not meet with universal approval within the Orange Order. But where the Portadown Orangemen are concerned the hero of Drumcree 1999 is undoubtedly the Rev John Pickering, rector of the Church of the Ascension there since 1983.

From the first speaker at the Orange Hall on Carleton Street yesterday morning to the last at the final rally in the field behind Drumcree rectory Mr Pickering heard such praise as might make lesser men giddy.

The high point came when he received a prolonged standing ovation at the end of the service in Drumcree church such as no rector has ever received there after a parade since they began in 1807.

The chorus began with Mr David Burrows, Deputy Master of Portadown District Lodge who, speaking to thousands of Orangemen from an upper window in the Orange Hall in Carleton Street before the parade, praised Mr Pickering as a true Protestant minister who had "stood by his parish and this District". The comment was followed by the first Pickering-inspired applause.

Mr Alan Milligan, a marshal at the head of the parade, is also a member of the vestry (lay parish committee) at Drumcree. He told a British TV crew as he marched along, when asked for his response to Archbishop Eames's attempts to have the Orange invitation to the service withdrawn, "the people own the church, not him and the bishops in the South".

At the end of the service in Drumcree church Mr Harold Gracey, Master of Portadown District, said Mr Pickering was "no stranger to anyone in this country at the moment, and I wish to pay tribute to him". Whereupon the Orangemen rose to their feet and applauded loudly.

Mr Gracey continued later that it was the first time he had seen a clergyman applauded in the church and he invited the congregation to also applaud Mr Pickering's wife, Olive. Which they did.

Mr Pickering, he said "had become a good friend over the past year. It is not easy for him. He has problems with the hierarchy of the church. But he stood solidly, as I said last year, like a rock at the top of the hill."

Mr Pickering, he said later in his address, was lighting a flame within the Church of Ireland just as the Portadown lodge was lighting a flame within the Orange Order.

Outside, a poster on a pole on the hill leading down to the barricade, read "Behold ye have filled Drumcree with your doctrine - well done, Rev Pickering.

At the rally behind Mr Pickering's rectory after six district officers had made their protest at the barricade, Mr Pickering and his family were again praised by Mr Gracey for "standing shoulder to shoulder with the Portadown brethren" unlike other clergy in the church.

"Ecumenism is rife in our church. Let them see this day ecumenism is dead," he said. "Luther stood alone, the [Protestant] martyrs stood alone for the Reformed faith. John Pickering has stood for the Reformed faith and let him continue to do so," for which there was further applause.

Speaking at the rally also, the Orange Order's Grand Secretary and Armagh's County Grand Master, Mr Denis Watson, joined in the chorus of praise. He wished to concur with what was said about Mr Pickering and his wife.

"Sadly I can report that other clergy don't take the same stand," he said.

In speaking himself, whether at the service or at the rally in the rectory field later, Mr Pickering made no reference whatever to the lavish praise showered on him or to any of the travails which had elicited such overwhelming gratitude.

At the rally he said: "At this very serious time in the history of our country and of our church" he wanted peace "up at Drumcree, on the Garvaghy Road, the whole of Portadown, for the country of Northern Ireland".

Asked what might now happen in terms of his and the Drumcree vestry's relationship with the Church of Ireland, he said he didn't know, but he was taking it "step by step, day by day."