One brave priest spoke the truth at a gangland funeral and proved that the Church can offer more than platitudes

THE gangland funeral for drug dealer Darragh Nugent didn’t exactly go according to the wellworn script. The father-of-three who was shot in cold blood outside his home in Clondalkin as part of a vicious feud was well known to the gardaí through his involvement in the drugs trade and gun crime.

He was, it seems, a nasty piece of work but the mourners who turned up at his funeral expecting to hear him praised to the rafters, his criminal past swept neatly under the carpet, except for a few delicately chosen words by the priest, were delivered a nasty shock.

For Fr David Halpin had other ideas when he got to his feet to deliver his sermon at the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Clondalkin.

In a courageous break with funeral convention, the priest highlighted Darragh’s life of crime and held a mirror up to the congregation, about how those who took drugs were also culpable in the ongoing drug wars.

‘All who give money for drugs bear some responsibility – [from] the stereotypical drug user, who is involved in petty crime to feed their habit, to the high-class socialite using cocaine at a party at the weekend and then going back to their respectable life on a Monday morning,’ Fr Halpin said in his hard-hitting sermon.

‘They all bear some responsibility for us being here today.

‘We are witnessing the tragic outworking of the drug culture.’

Nerves

Fr Halpin didn’t mince his words. Shaking from nerves, he said that while the late Darragh didn’t deserve to die, he had made ‘bad, bad decisions’ that contributed to his downfall.

Not surprisingly, the sermon went down like a lead balloon among some members of the congregation. There was heckling from the pews, and some mourners, aghast at the priest’s forthright denunciation of their slain friend, repeatedly shouted ‘stop’.

One indignant mourner thundered ‘that’s enough…this is supposed to be a celebration of Darragh’s life’.

Four members of the congregation left the church in fury, and order was only restored when Darragh’s partner, Cathy, shouted for the priest to continue, saying that ‘he has to do what he has to do’.

In one sense, you can see where the mourners are coming from. The recent spate of gangster funerals, particularly those arising from the bloody HutchKinahan feud, often showed ruthless criminals and drug runners celebrated from the pulpit as family men, devoted sons and fathers, with their wicked ways only obliquely mentioned.

The priests used their funerals to console their grief-stricken parents or partners, to lavish attention on their fatherless children and to reach out to all those affected by the loss. Throw in a general plea for an end to the senseless violence, the tit-for-tat cycle of revenge and retaliation and that was about it.

Compassion

The elephant in the room, aka the misery inflicted by the sins of the deceased, the lives ruined by drugs and families ruled by fear and threat of gangland violence was rarely, if ever, identified.

It’s almost as if once a criminal has shifted off the mortal coil, their sins are forgotten and forgiven and the focus falls back wholly onto their private lives: their passion for Manchester United, their love of a prank, their local pub, anything and everything that turns their persona from evil incarnate into a loveable rogue.

It’s understandable why priests choose to take what can appear to be the easy way out.

If they minister in a close-knit and disadvantaged community with links to the criminal underworld, they walk a precarious tightrope between showing compassion for their flock and not giving succour to criminality.

They might believe that their hands are tied about what they can say on a highly charged public platform like a funeral, when families are on edge and communities engulfed by sorrow.

With the promise of reprisals hanging in the air and specialist Garda units on standby, priests might be reluctant to say anything that could inflame an already volatile situation.

They might also believe that a nonjudgmental attitude and understanding the complex web of forces that makes hardened criminals out of young men is the best route to winning their community’s respect and, hopefully, in time nudge troublemakers into mending their ways.

Priests are also bound by the Christian credos about ‘letting God be our judge’, ‘saints and sinners being equal before God’ and about the power of Christ’s forgiveness.

Criticism

Perhaps the overarching reason though for the lack of criticism is secular rather than scriptural – our reticence about ’not speaking ill of the dead’ particularly when they’re not even cold in their grave.

Fr Halpin’s readiness to speak up without fear or favour is refreshing, brave and honest. It shows real leadership from the Church on the issue of law and order and security, which after housing and health is our most pressing social problem today.

Gangland activity may spring from under-privileged neighbourhoods but the scourges of drug abuse, drug dealing and violence have tentacles that spread right through society, destroying lives and causing untold misery.

After the ceremony, Fr Halpin told the media that he had a duty to raise the issue of drug dealing.

‘It is what it is. I was speaking the truth and some people did not like it,’ he said. ‘There are many people in my parish who are victims of drugs. The drug pushers are responsible for a lot of that.

‘If I was to stand up and say what a nice guy he (Darragh Nugent) was it wouldn’t be accurate or true.’

Darragh’s mourners may feel bitter about being forced to confront the ugly truth about his life and indeed their own guilt about the drugs world. They had expected, as one mourner said, a ‘celebration’.

But a Christian funeral is not a celebration of the life that has ended. That is only part of it – more profoundly, for believers at least, the funeral is a Mass and a series of religious rites that take place before burial.

Darragh can be celebrated in the pub afterwards or the hotel, among the friends and family who think only well of him, and overlook his life of crime.

But for the sake of victims of crime and the truth, and in the hope that some young man or woman can be persuaded off the path of criminality as a result of a priest’s powerful sermon, then it’s better that dangerous figures like Darragh Nugent are held up to scrutiny, warts and all, during their funerals rather than have a gloss put on their crimes.