An estimated 2,000 people attended the funeral in Cagayan De Oro City in the southern Philippines of the murdered Irish Columban priest, Father Rufus Halley.
Several Muslim women sat alongside Father Halley's five brothers, John, Walter, Eamon, Gerry and Emmett, who travelled from Ireland and Greece to bury their brother on Saturday.
Muslims and Christians packed into the Church of the Immaculate Conception to share their grief at the murder of the 57-year-old missionary, who was killed last Tuesday in a failed kidnapping attempt by suspected members of a rebel Muslim gang outside the town of Malabang in Lanao del Sur on the island of Mindanao.
Many of the Muslims who attended the service had travelled five hours by road from Father Halley's home town of Malabang to be there.
In a special message read at the funeral, Pope John Paul II offered his "heartfelt condolences" to Father Halley's family. The Pope said he was confident that Father Halley's memory would inspire those he had served to attain "a greater fidelity to Christ and more intense commitment to the cause of peace". He described the Waterford-born priest as a man who had tried to mend cultural differences among Christians and Muslims in war-torn areas of Mindanao.
The head of the Columban missionaries in the Philippines, Father Colm McKeating, and a close friend of Father Halley, a Muslim school principal named Connie Balindong, paid tribute to him during the emotional funeral Mass.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground at the Divine Shepherd Memorial Park, one of Father Halley's brothers, Walter, placed a blue corsage, made by their mother, on top of the lid.
Meanwhile, police are still hunting for the suspected member of a Muslim rebel group who shot Father Halley. They have already arrested the driver of the getaway van and the man who acted as lookout for the gang.