Fr. Stephen Kearney who comforted the Greysteel families has died

Fr. Kearney, who was 76, died on Thursday and will be buried in County Tyrone tomorrow.

He was a curate at Star of the Sea when, on October 30, 1993, loyalist gunmen burst into the Rising Sun bar and murdered eight people in one of the most infamous atrocities of the conflict.

Karen Thompson (19), Steven Mullan (20), Moira Duddy (59), Joseph McDermott (60), James Moore (81), John Moyne (50), John Burns (54) and Victor Montgomery (76) were all murdered.

Recalling the events years later Fr. Kearney said: "It was very true of Greysteel that those who suffered the most were quickest to forgive, to look for peace."

Speaking on the twentieth anniversary of the mass shooting he said: "I remember certain moments. One was when I was standing outside the chapel the next morning. I hadn’t been to my bed until that morning. I was over for the nine o’clock Mass in the chapel and I saw a few people standing there.

"They were barely able to speak, in shock. It was a dry, cool autumn morning. If I could paint the picture I wouldn’t have to describe it — everybody seemed to be grey, everything seemed to be grey, everyone seemed to have been wearing grey clothes. Everything was in a haze of grey dullness."

Fr. Kearney died peacefully at home in Omagh.

He was the son of the late Patrick and Bernadette Kearney from Plumbridge.

He is mourned by his brothers and sisters, Margaret, Seamus, Sr. Dolores OLA, Paddy Joe, Bernadette, Gerard, Kevin, Teresa, Mary, Philomena and Eugene, and his nieces and nephews.

Requiem Mass will be celebrated in St Mary’s Church, Killyclogher, on Saturday at 1 pm before Fr. Kearney's remains are interred at St. Mary’s Cemetery, Aughabrack, outside Donemana.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic all restrictions must be adhered to.

He is deeply regretted Bishop McKeown, all priests of the diocese, brothers, sisters, all his nieces and nephews, parishioners and close friends.

Looking back on the aftermath of the Greysteel killings in 2013 he reflected: "It has been said that the Troubles had their origins in Derry, but they had the beginning of their end in Derry.

The media had a role to play in that. The cruelty of it, the sheer barbarity of it — trick or treat — that was well enough portrayed. It was really anti-human and it was portrayed as such."