‘He had that indefinable something, that magic’
In a speech that drew several warm outbursts of applause from mourners, Fr Haughey said the former Taoiseach had worked hard for many causes, including peace in the North, the arts, and the cause of the less fortunate.
Mr Haughey “worked on a large canvas, in broad imaginative strokes” and had always shown concern for society’s poor and less fortunate, he said.
“And there was the North of Ireland peace process which he helped to ignite quietly and patriotically ... he did it because he felt it was up to him and his generation to do something about the problem in the North of Ireland.
“It was always close to his heart and high on his political agenda. And when he left office he could hand on to others a peace process whose foundations he had laid and which he had set in motion.”
Turning to the controversy which dogged his brother throughout his political career, Fr Haughey compared Mr Haughey to a high mountain.
“The lives of great men are like the high mountains — they always attract the storms. Whatever about the greatness or otherwise of his achievements, CJ certainly attracted the storms. But thank God, and on this day I do thank God, he came through it all without bitterness or rancour.
“In all these 30 or 40 years of public life, when so much that was hostile was written or said about him, he never once, to my knowledge, he never once retaliated in kind. Thank God. Never a word in his own defence.”
Fr Haughey said his brother “had that indefinable something, that magnetism, that magic quality”.
“He had style, they said, flair, panache. Some may not have liked it, or understood it — so be it. But the style, they say, is the man.
“He certainly lived in the public eye. The media saw to that.
“But he never lost the common touch and let it be said here today that CJH was a good friend and generous benefactor to the poor and the needy.”
Concluding his poignant address, Fr Haughey depicted the former Fianna Fáil leader as a wounded hero — just like the statue of Cú Chulainn on the front lawn of his home.
“I think it tells us a lot about CJ and his vision of things. It’s a wooden statue and its carved out of an elm tree off the estate that fell down in a storm.
“I think that’s typical of Cathal. He had created something magnificent out of disaster. That was one of the great lessons of his life, I think. To overcome adversity, not to quit, not to whinge or moan.
“Even the symbolism of Cú Chulainn, the wounded hero who died standing erect, strapped to the pillar and refusing to fall. There was a lot of that in CJH.”
But most of all Fr Haughey expressed relief that despite all the tumult Mr Haughey never became bitter.
“As he once said in an interview on television, in all the cut and thrust of battle, the steel never entered the soul. There was no poison in the heart.”
