Tributes were paid by family and friends to the murdered 54-year-old mother of two, who was laid to rest amid emotional scenes in a quiet corner of a country graveyard near her home in Co Waterford at the weekend.
Karen Walsh led the tributes to Mary 'Maimie' Walsh when she spoke at the funeral Mass in Kilrossanty about what a loving parent her mother was and how much she and the other members of her family would miss her.
Ms Walsh's brother, Tom Whelan, read a poem, Wonderful Sister, which he wrote in her memory.
Mary Walsh's body was found locked in the boot of her car at Cathal Brugha Street, Waterford, on Wednesday - two days after she left her home in Kilrossanty to deposit several thousand euro in a bank at Kilmacthomas, five miles away.
A 58-year-old Scot, Samuel Jennings, Ashtown, Kilmacthomas, has been remanded in custody after he was charged at Waterford District Court on Friday morning with the woman's murder at Ashtown, Kilmacthomas, on August 30th.
On Saturday the parish priest of Kilrossanty, Fr John Delaney, spoke of the great coming together of family and friends and local people to support Ms Walsh's husband, Pa, her daughters, Karen and Paula, her brother, Tom, her sisters, Breda and Martina, and her mother, Mary.
"It is a time and occasion where people need people," Fr Delaney said, as hundreds of mourners packed St Brigid's Church, Kilrossanty, and hundreds more gathered outside in the sun-filled cemetery and main street of the village for the funeral mass.
Fr Delaney said that Ms Walsh's death "had taxed our faith", adding that she had embodied God's love by living her life to the full for herself, her family and for others through her kindness and generosity. He said evidence of man's inhumanity to man all over the world was only too clear from daily news reports but it still held a shocking power when it happened so close to home and to one of their own.
"I suppose it's only when it knocks on our own front door that we come to get a full realisation of such. It's only then, I suppose, that bells start ringing; then we begin to see that this is not right," he said.
"Human life is sacred, it's sacred today and it will be sacred tomorrow and no one has the right to take anyone's life. What God has created, man must not destroy. No one has the right to take one's freedom of life away from them," he said.
He urged anyone who might have any information on the murder to make it available.
