Father Paddy was ‘a good priest who suffered with people’, mourners told

Father Paddy O’Kane will be remembered as a good priest who was ‘human and generous to a fault’, mourners at his funeral have heard.
Rev. Paddy O'Kane.Rev. Paddy O'Kane.
Rev. Paddy O'Kane.

Father Paddy (73), who passed away suddenly in hospital earlier this week, will be laid to rest in his native Culdaff in Inishowen on Thursday afternoon following Requiem Mass at Holy Family Church, Ballymagroarty, where he ministered for much of his priesthood.

Among the mourners at a packed Holy Family were Fr O’Kane’s brothers, nieces and nephews, fellow priests and parishioners from across the Derry diocese and further afield.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Also there was actress Roma Downey who travelled from the United States for her friend’s funeral and delivered one of the readings.

Speaking at today’s Mass, Bishop of Derry, Dr Donal McKeown, said Father O’Kane was a “priest who suffered with people” and was someone “who knew he shared the frailties of our human nature.”

Bishop McKeown said that, although he worked in a number of parishes during his 49 years as a priest, Fr Paddy “didn’t really respect parish lines”.

“Wherever people came from and needed him, Paddy tried to help them,” he said.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“He knew so well how many people felt frail and unloved because of where they had been and what had happened in their lives. He was able to speak powerfully in helping parishioners,” added Dr McKeown.

In recent years, said the Bishop, Fr Paddy’s “giving nature” had taken a toll on him and, often, “he had not been able to be the priest that he wanted to be”.

“For somebody who had put his whole identity into being a priest of Jesus Christ, it is very painful when you can no longer offer what people had expected from him since 1973,” the Bishop said.

“Today we give thanks for the ministry of Fr Paddy O’Kane. We remember him as a wounded healer. We acknowledge the frailty that wore him down,” added Dr McKeown.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Very Rev. Brian Brady, PP Clonmany, a close friend of Father O’Kane, who delivered the homily at the Requiem Mass, described him as an ‘an artisan of beauty’ whose “frenetic activism and technicolour lifestyle” were unmistakable.

Fr Paddy had, he said, a “wonderfully effusive personality” which led to him being “universally loved”. He endeared himself to a multitude of people with his joyful expression of priesthood and his fun loving approach to life.

He added: “His heart ruled his head in every situation and he found it impossible to say ‘no’ to anyone, which meant that he gave of himself unstintingly in the face of every need, especially those whom society had little time for. He was very open about his own struggles and his compassion made it possible for others to be more at ease with their own vulnerability and pain. He allowed his own raw scars to be transformed into sacred wounds offering peace, healing and hope to others.”

Father Brady went on: “The price of Fr. Paddy’s mental overload, his excessively generous priestly service, his hectic lifestyle and needy personality increasingly took its toll on him and the demon darkness of depression and burnout began to dominate his life... Paddy knew the awfulness of desolation in all its dreadfulness and, indeed, the appalling darkness seemed to have overwhelmed him; but our faith and his faith tells us that, in the words of the hymn, ‘Our God is light inaccessible, hid from our eyes’ and that the darkness is really ‘the splendour of light too strong for our sight’. In the depth of the darkness, our friend Paddy has found the peace that he longed for with the saviour he loved and served so well.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Before the Mass, Father O’Kane’s brother, Tommy, told mourners his brother had been his best friend and had spent his life “putting others first”.

“I know how much he loved the Holy Family parish and how much he felt loved in return,” he said.

Father O’Kane is to be laid to rest in his home parish of St. Mary’s Bocan, Culdaff.

Related topics: