Community mourns kind, funny Joanne

A SINGLE red rose adorned the coffin of 20-year-old Joanne Mangan at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption in Newcastle, as her heartbroken parents, siblings, relatives and friends gathered to say farewell.

The priest officiating at the murder victim’s funeral on Saturday took the opportunity to make an impassioned plea to everybody to do everything they can to protect their friends and their children, reminding the congregation that “human life is precious”.

Two of the songs that lit up Joanne’s life, Everything I Do (I do it for you) by Bryan Adams and the upbeat, optimistic chords of UB40’s Kingston Town rang around the church, summoning up happy memories of the young woman who made friends wherever she went.

It was in a state of shock that members of the rural community in south Tipperary, half a dozen miles from Clonmel, gathered to remember a neighbour who had met a violent death in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Clonmel man Kevin Prendergast, 30, is on remand in Limerick Prison on charges of murdering Joanne and assaulting her brother Eddie, 23.

Prayers were said at Joanne’s funeral Mass for the continued recovery of Eddie, a blocklayer, who is making slow but steady progress at Cork University Hospital.

Their parents, Helen and Brendan, members of a farming family from Newcastle, were comforted by their other sons and daughters. Joanne was the second youngest in a family of eight children.

Gifts brought to the altar before the offertory represented some of Joanne’s great loves — including CDs, a baseball cap, a football and a badminton racquet.

Parish priest Fr Francis Lloyd spoke for all present when he said that there was just one question they wanted answered: “Could we not have her back? Could these extraordinary and unbelievable days be wiped away? All we can offer by our presence here is a sense of shared loss, a touch of comfort, an assurance of our love. Every death is tragic, but Joanne’s passing has touched and galvanised our whole community, and beyond.”

Reflecting on the events of the last week, Fr Lloyd said that there was nothing that could be done or said that could measure up to the loss felt by Joanne’s loved ones.

The parish priest of Newcastle and Fourmilewater also described the tragedy as “an invitation to all of us to refocus our lives to what really matters” and said that Joanne, who worked in the catering industry, was funny, good-natured and kind.

He made this appeal to those present: “If we could use every resource we have to make our friends and our children safe in the world, what an immense and worthwhile task that would be, because it underpins the fact that we all believe that human life is precious.”

As the coffin left the church, more tears were shed as Sarah McLaughlin’s In the Arms of the Angels summed up the family’s and community’s hopes for Joanne. The 20-year-old’s remains were laid to rest in Newcastle’s Old Cemetery.