Catholic priest furious at ‘scandal’ of Shane MacGowan’s entertaining funeral: ‘Completely inappropriate’-Alistair McGeorge-Entertainment – Metro

Shane MacGowan’s funeral was a celebration of his life (Picture: Jakubaszek/Getty Images)

A Catholic priest has claimed the funeral of Shane MacGowan was ‘completely inappropriate’ for the church.

The Pogues singer died in November aged 65 and was laid to rest last week in Negagh, Co Tipperary with the likes of Nick Cave and Johnny Depp paying their respects.

However, Fr Paddy McCafferty, the parish priest at Corpus Christi in Belfast, has slammed the entertaining and joyous occasion celebrating the life of the Irish music icon, describing it as a ‘scandal’.

The mass featured some musical performances as mourners danced in the aisles to an energetic rendition of Fairytale of New York, but Fr McCafferty was unimpressed.

He told Belfast Live: ‘It was an abuse of what mass is and what the Catholic funeral liturgy is all about.

‘The introduction of all these elements into that funeral mass frankly was a scandal and it shouldn’t have happened.

Fr Paddy McCafferty was furious by the scenes (Picture: PA)

His music was sung in the church during the funeral (Picture: Reuters/Karen Cox)

‘If they wanted to have that sort of event they could have hired a hall somewhere and did all that.’

The priest described MacGowan as a ‘good man in his own way’, insisting he was ‘entitled to a funeral mass as every baptised Catholic is’.

He added: ‘But all of that stuff should have been kept out of the mass, there is no place for that in the mass at all.

‘It was an abuse of the liturgy and it showed a completely askew understanding of what we actually are doing when we celebrate a funeral mass.’

Mourners danced in the aisle during the service

He was particularly angry about Fairytale of New York being played in mass, insisting the decision to sing it after Holy Communion was ‘totally out of place’.

Fr McCafferty said the purpose of mass is to ‘celebrate the worship of God’, not to ‘entertain’.

‘The words that are used in that song and in the church showed no understanding of the sacredness of what the place is and the holiness of the mass,’ he argued.

‘It was completely inappropriate to say the least, to the point of scandal and something needs to be done about these so-called celebrity funerals in a Catholic church.

Fr McCafferty insisted it was appropriate for the setting (Picture: Alamy Stock Photo)

‘If people don’t want that then go somewhere else.’

MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke announced his death in a family statement on November 30, sharing: ‘I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it.’

She said: ‘Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.’

She went on: ‘I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures.

‘There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world. Thank you thank you thank you thank you for your presence in this world you made it so very bright and you gave so much joy to so many people with your heart and soul and your music.

‘You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much. You meant the world to me.’

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