Priest who administered last rites tells of his shock

FATHER Mick Murphy, parish priest in Ballyphehane in Cork, who was asked to administer the last rites to the six people who died in the air crash on Thursday said he was unprepared for the tragedy and shocked by it.

Fr Murphy said he heard about the accident when a friend phoned him.

“I phoned the airport and they asked me to go up. I cycled up as there were a lot of cars around.

“I was brought out onto the runway where the tent was — the bodies were inside there. I anointed everyone and we remembered them all at Masses yesterday.”

Though he had spent time in the Lebanon with the Army, Fr Murphy said he had not come across any such situations there.

“Or at least we were prepared for it there, but yesterday morning we never anticipated that we would be involved in such a tragedy. It is awful for the families.”

As the airport is in Fr Murphy’s parish he holds a Mass there every year.

“We celebrate it in the fire station and the guys who were there on Thursday I know very well, and we would always pray that such a tragedy would not happen.”

An added poignancy for the parish was that it lost people in another air crash — when the Aer Lingus Viscount crashed into the Irish Sea near Tuskar Rock, off Co Wexford, in 1968. All 61 people on board flying from Cork to London were killed and no official cause for the crash was ever established.

“There were parishioners on board accompanied by one of the parish priests Fr Hegarty. They were going to visit Ballyphehane people who working in England at the time. We had a Mass for them for the 30th anniversary and it is our plan to erect a memorial to them in our grounds. We want to do it properly, hopefully in the next year or two.”

Fr Murphy hoped something similar could be done for those who lost their lives this week.