President Mary McAleese and Bishop Séamus Hegarty of Derry sent messages of sympathy to mourners at the funerals yesterday of four young people who died in a car accident in Co Donegal at the weekend.
Businesses across the Inishowen peninsula closed as upwards of 1,000 people gathered for the funerals of Gavin Duffy (22), Darren Quinn (21) and later Rochelle Peoples (21), in St Mary's Church, Cockhill, near Buncrana.
In heavy rain the large congregation crowded around the church as local curate Fr Con McLoughlin welcomed the coffins of the young people and also offered prayers for David Steele (22) and Charlene O'Connor (21), who also died in Saturday morning's crash.
Fr McLoughlin remembered that they themselves had lost friends in road traffic accidents only the year before. It was, he said, "as if a generation of young people was being lost".
He recalled attending the scene of the accident in the early hours of Saturday and the sense of shock among local people that death had struck their community again. "There is a deep sense of grief that manifests itself in a stunned silence - that dignified silence summed up people's feelings as the enormity of what had happened sunk in. The unthinkable had happened, their loved ones were no more."
He recalled that one of the family pictures on the mantelpiece in Gavin Duffy's home was a photograph of Gavin with his friend, Shane Cuffe, who had been killed on the road near Buncrana last year. That photograph, Gavin's athletics trophy and Darren's boxing gloves, were brought to the altar as offerings during the funeral Mass.
Members of the Buncrana boxing club, of which Darren was a member, along with students of Buncrana College where Darren and Gavin went to school, and members of the local Gaelscoil formed a guard of honour at the church.
In his homily Fr McLoughlin said it was understandable that family and friends might feel anger. "At this moment they don't want to hear the words 'eternal life'. They just want these children starting out in life to be with them again . . . It is understandable that they may feel even anger." But he added that the families' faith was a humbling thing and he prayed that it would help them to come to terms with their terrible loss.
As the funeral of the two young men transferred to the graveyard behind the church, the funeral of Rochelle Peoples was arriving at the front. Fr McLoughlin said the President had sent a message of "heartfelt sympathy" to the families of all the people killed in the weekend accidents.
Fr Eddie McGuinness , who celebrated requiem Mass for Rochelle Peoples, said her loss and the loss of all the other young people was unimaginably painful. He prayed for the sixth victim of the weekend accidents and also for one man who remains in a serious condition at Altnagelvin.
Both priests appealed to the young people of the town to be conscious of the dangers associated with driving.