John Bingham, Long Island native, advocate for Catholic Charities, has died

John Bingham was 29 and on his way to a gilded life as a vice president of a major Wall Street investment firm.

But the Rockville Centre native, who died July 26 at age 64, wanted something more. One day decades ago, the corporate lawyer walked into his boss’ office and quit. He was headed to Thailand, to work as a $248-a-month Catholic Church volunteer with refugees from Cambodia’s “Killing Fields.”

“John said to me, ‘You know, I looked at my life, and here I am, being fast-tracked into the fancy home in Connecticut with the stone wall, and I didn’t want it,’” recalled Richard Koubek, a former colleague of Bingham’s at Catholic Charities on Long Island. “He gave up everything.”

Bingham arrived in a dusty, bug-infested camp surrounded by barbed wire and land mines, home to 240,000 refugees on the Cambodia-Thailand border. There was no electricity, running water or a decent hospital. Raw sewage trickled along open ditches.

After eight years in the camp, Bingham returned to his native Long Island, where he went to work for the Catholic Church and became a major figure advocating for the rights of Hispanic immigrants. He later moved to France, his wife’s native country, and became a noted figure on immigration issues, speaking at the United Nations and working for a Vatican-supported advocacy group in Geneva.

One of his sisters, Mary Bingham-Johnsen, of Rockville Centre, called him “the ultimate Christian.”

Bingham, 64, died unexpectedly at a family country home in France, according to relatives.

His work was not just on a policy level — he took it home with him, literally. Bingham more than once took refugees into his home on Long Island for the Christmas holidays, said the Rev. John Gilmartin, who first hired him at Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

“I don’t think there is anybody I ever met that was more saintlike,” Gilmartin said.

Besides his knowledge of social justice issues, Bingham had a passion and ability to sway people, Gilmartin and others said. Gilmartin recalled that once after Bingham spoke about immigration at a parish on Long Island, a congregant came up and gave him a check for $90,000.

“I want this to go for migrants because I never heard anybody make an appeal like that,” Gilmartin recalled the man saying.

After graduating from St. John’s University, Bingham landed a job at Kidder Peabody and was rising rapidly while pursuing a law degree at Fordham Law School at night.

But he eventually felt another calling, joining an uncle who was a Jesuit priest working at the refugee camp.

“I was terrified, stepping out of this formula that looked like it was working already,” Bingham told Newsday in 2002. “I was scared to death, but I just felt myself being drawn” to Cambodia.

He stirred things up in the camp, where temperatures soared to 117 degrees and grenades sold for the equivalent of $1. He taught the refugees about law, democracy and justice.

It soon had shocking consequences. A powerful judge in the camp’s fledgling legal system raped the fiancee of one of Bingham’s prize students, Run Saray. Run wanted to press charges. Bingham wanted justice, but also feared it might get Run killed. The judge was protected by armed and dangerous men.

Run and his fiancee pressed ahead. The judge — a serial rapist — was convicted. Refugees in the camp could hardly believe it.

The judge later escaped from prison, ran for president, and — still seething over the case — denounced Bingham on national television as a CIA spy.

Bingham brought his passion for justice when he returned to Long Island and became head of immigrant and refugee services for Catholic Charities. He also served as chair of the New York Immigration Coalition and on the migration advisory group of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

He led the church’s fight in the early 2000s to establish a hiring site in Farmingville to ease community tensions by getting hundreds of day laborers off the streets and at locations where they would wait for work.

The site never got built, but Bingham earned a reputation as a visionary advocate for immigrants.

“John was an extraordinary leader of our immigration and refugee services,” said Laura Cassell, the longtime CEO of Catholic Charities.

He had met his wife, Agnès Dupré la Tour, in the refugee camp, where she also worked as a volunteer. In 2005 they moved to France. Bingham eventually went to work as head of policy at the Vatican-supported International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva. The group assists and advocates for refugees and migrants worldwide.

“All major advances in our movement over the past decade and more had John’s fingerprints on them, and most were primarily driven by him,” the group said in a statement. “We have lost a champion and steadfast leader for migrants’ rights and global civil society.”

The organization said that from 2008 to 2020, Bingham coordinated civil society organizations at the annual Global Forum on Migration and Development, a major international gathering that brings together representatives from more than 100 countries. He also piloted the Civil Society Action Committee and participated in numerous other civil society networks and formations.

Bingham's work helped shape global migration governance, and created opportunities for dialogue among countries, international organizations, employers, unions and civil society, the group said.

He left the group in 2018 and was working as a consultant on immigration issues. He served as volunteer Geneva representative on the executive committee of the NGO Committee on Migration in New York, which has consultative status with the United Nations.

As news of his death spread, online tributes poured in from around the world: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines.

Along with his wife and sister,  Bingham is also survived by four sons, Jérémy, John, Matthias and Thomas; and siblings Claire Bingham Darroch, of Seaford, Charles C. Bingham Jr., of Tinton Falls, New Jersey, Joseph M. Bingham, of Clifton, New Jersey, Richard F. Bingham, of Asbury Park, New Jersey, and James C. Bingham, of Rockville Centre.

A funeral Mass and burial were held Monday in Bercenay-en-Othe, France.