Largely credited for helping start LGBTQIA Pride in the Philippines, Fr. Richard Mickley, OSAe, Ph.D., Abbot of the Order of Saint Aelred, passed away at the age of 94 on February 14, 2023.
Mickley’s involvement with the LGBTQIA community in the Philippines started in May 1991. In an earlier interview with Outrage Magazine, he recalled that while working as a pastor in New Zealand, he claimed to have received a letter from a Filipino who asked him to also do his work here. Mickey obliged, ahead of the very first Pride in the Philippines and in Asia on June 26, 1994, when he gave “the first Troy Perry-type pride sermon” during the first Pride Mass at the high altar of the Cathedral of the Holy Child.
“They signed a petition for me to come back,” Mickley said, promising him “food and a place to sleep. I accepted.”
He eventually established the first MCC church, becoming the mentor of many heads of LGBTQIA churches in the Philippines now. Similarly, he established the Gay men’s Support Group (GMSG), which was patterned after LGBTQIA support groups in Western countries, and preceding “clans” (or formalized informal gay and bi organizations whose members first met through technology, and then physically met for social connections).
But a big source of pride for Mickley has been his part in the first Pride march in Asia. “I had set up the first openly gay and lesbian Christian activist group in the Philippines in 1991, and Pro Gay Philippines became the first openly activist organization for gay and lesbian rights in 1992. Oscar Atadero, a board member of MCC and an officer of Pro Gay Philippines, and I, pastor of MCC, talked in early 1994 about the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York. He obtained the approval of Pro Gay to sponsor a Pride March in Quezon City on June 26, 1994, and I obtained the approval of the Board of Directors of MCC Manila to co-sponsor the march which turned out to be not only the first in the Philippines, but the first in Asia,” Mickley recalled.
When Mickley – born in the US on November 12, 1928 – retired from MCC in 1995 because of the church’s age rules, he decided to stay in the Philippines for good.
Also, his advocacy didn’t stop. He established the Order of Saint Aelred; the PLHIV support group, The Well; and became Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of One Spirit (non-Roman). In 1999, he was also the editor in chief of ManilaOUT, which was the first LGBTQIA newspaper in the Philippines; published by Bayani Santos Jr., it eventually folded.
In 2013, the Coalition of Services of the Elderly Inc. (COSE) recognized Mickley as one of the Sampung Ulirang Nakatatanda (Ten Outstanding Elderly).
In the Philippines, Mickley is survived by his long-time partner, Simon Arias; and by the people whose lives he touched.
