An Taoiseach Enda Kenny carries the coffin of his mother Eithne from the Church of the Holy Rosary in Castlebar yesterday, assisted by his brothers John and Henry and his nephew, Henry Jnr. 

THEY came in their thousands to pay respect to her loved ones, and though rain berated the street outside all morning long, the Church of The Holy Rosary in Castlebar was alive with the kind of celebration of life that the family of the late Eithne Kenny had longed for.

Ah, no one does a funeral — or writes it up — like the Irish. “Though rain berated the street…”

Eithne Kenny was the mother of the Taoiseach — the same Taoiseach who recently berated the Church in the wake of the paedophile priest scandal, denouncing “the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day.” No matter, Eithne Kenny’s funeral mass was co-celebrated by a full line-up: Monsignor Joe Quinn, PP Knock, Fr JJ Doherty, CC Glencolmcille, Fr Brendan Hoban, Castlebar, Fr Martin O’Keefe, CC Glenisland, Fr Peter Quinn, Ballina, Fr Karl Burns, CC Westport, Fr Jack Garvey, PP Carnacon, Fr Peter Waldron, PP Keelogues, Fr Michéal Mac Gréil, S.J Westport and Reverend Val Rogers, Westport, representing The Church of Ireland. Father Michael Farragher acted as master of ceremonies and Canon John Cosgrove, PP Castlebar, acted as chaplain to the President’s aide-de-camp, Colonel Michael McMahon.

No one does a funeral like the Irish.

At the end of his address to the congregation, her son,  An Taoiseach Enda Kenny, asked those gathered not to applaud his words, but to “applaud the mothers of Ireland, those gone and those here, and to draw on their strengths as you face the challenges of life”.

Full report here.