The mourners at the funeral of Fergal "Rick" McCusker at a country church situated at the foot of the Glenshane Pass just outside Maghera, Co Derry, yesterday heard the local parish priest, Father Seamus O'Connell, speak of innocence and evil.
His remarks about innocence referred to Mr Fergal McCusker (28), a young man, a Gaelic football enthusiast, and a former construction worker in Boston who returned to Maghera out of homesickness.
The priest's comments about evil were reserved for his killers.
A huge crowd turned out at St Patrick's Church at Glen to express sorrow at Mr McCusker's death at the hands of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, and to show solidarity with his grieving parents, six brothers and two sisters.
Mr McCusker had not spent long in Boston, but he left his mark there. There were wreaths from a Boston GAA club and a heartfelt and tender message of affection from Colleen, in Boston. A Portadown friend described him as "the only man that put a smile on everybody's face".
Wreaths also came from the Fairhill Youth Club in Maghera, where his LVF killers shot him early on Sunday morning. As his coffin bearing local and Boston GAA jerseys made its way from his home to the Glen Church about two miles away, the town came to a halt.
Father O'Connell led the 2,000 mourners in prayers for Mr McCusker, and the other two men killed in a 48-hour period over Sunday and Monday, Mr Jim Guiney and Mr Larry Brennan. Such killings were dastardly and the "ultimate act of indecency against human beings", he said.
Referring to the LVF's attempts to smear Mr McCusker by claiming he was a republican, Father O'Connell added: "The powers of darkness tried to sully Fergal's character, but you know and I know that he was an innocent young man, whose only crime was that he fell into the hands of criminals."
The LVF killers tried to justify their savagery by concocting lies, he added. "The motivation for the murder was to instil fear into the community, and to vent inbred hatred and bigotry, and to destroy our hope of peace," he added. "Fergal's death was an act of bigotry: any Catholic would have done . . . Bigotry inflicts a kind of blindness that does not want to see the light."
He also commended Mr McCusker's mother, Christina, who told him she wanted no bitterness, bore no grudge, and pitied those who murdered her son.
The Bishop of Derry Dr Seamus Hegarty - speaking before last night's murder in Belfast - called on all paramilitary groupings considering further killings to "desist from their actions which are so evil and inimical to the peace which we are so earnestly praying for and trying to build". "The death of Fergal McCusker, a man of peace, must not and should not be used by anyone as an excuse for retaliation. His family has already made this clear as have families of other victims. The multi-party talks must continue with a new resolve and with a new determination," added Bishop Hegarty.
The Rev Frederick Munce, a former Methodist minister in Magherafelt, now based in Derry, who attended the funeral, said afterwards that Mr McCusker's killing, and other recent murders, were motivated by pure evil.
