FORMER ATTORNEY general Declan Costello was a Christian thinker who developed concrete ideas for a better Ireland, mourners at his funeral were told yesterday.
Mr Costello, a former Fine Gael TD and president of the High Court, had one of the finest legal minds in 20th-century Ireland and was also a great family man, according to the chief celebrant, Msgr Richard Sherry.
Best known for his authorship of Fine Gaels Just Society document in the 1960s, Mr Costello died last Monday at the age of 84. His funeral at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook was attended by large numbers of former colleagues from the party and from the legal world.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny led the mourners while the President, Mary McAleese, was represented by her aide-de-camp, Capt Louise Conlon. Former taoiseach Liam Cosgrave was also in attendance.
Msgr Sherry described the funeral as “a celebration of thanksgiving and a tribute of farewell to a great Christian who walked among us and offered us a new vision for living”.
He pointed out that the church in Donnybrook was Mr Costello’s “spiritual home”, which he and his beloved wife, Joan, attended on Sundays for many years. His funeral was a last and final tribute to someone who had always been “a faithful follower of Jesus”.
At his family’s request, Mr Costello’s death was being marked with a requiem of quiet reflection, with prayers and readings chosen by family members, Msgr Sherry said.
Mr Costello was a Christian thinker moulded by the insights of the philosophy of the Second Vatican Council and his political thinking by great European post-war leaders such as Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer.
Among Mr Costello’s greatest gifts was the way he could use his “powerful awareness” as he exposed the soul of 20th-century Ireland. Quoting Carl Jung’s aphorism that “religion is obedience to awareness”, Fr Sherry said that, like Jung, Mr Costello tried to translate this awareness into concrete ideas for a better Ireland. “His was a prophetic voice that is, sadly, no more.”
The chief mourners were Joan Costello, her children John, Joan, Caroline and David, and the extended family.
At their request, there was no eulogy, though at the end of the service John read the words of Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Schriver:
“For it is in our giving to others, in our failing to give, in our caring or failing to care, that we inch mankind forward or let it fall back. The love we give to our friends, our parents, our children, to the sick, the aged, the poor, the powerless, becomes a part of each of us and multiplies as we pass it on. And slowly, day by day, through this mysterious arithmetic, the hardness and pain of life are diminished and the thin, precious spiral of hope ascends.”
Chief Justice John Murray and predecessors Ronan Keane and Tom Finlay attended the service, as did the President of the High Court, Nicky Kearns, and his predecessor, Ricky Johnson. Attorney General Máire Whelan was present, along with her predecessors Michael McDowell, John Rogers and Peter Sutherland.
Legal figures present also included Supreme Court judges Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell and Ms Justice Susan Denham; Mr Justice Peter Kelly, Mr Justice Paul Carney, Mr Justice Gerard Hogan, Mr Justice John McMenamin and Mr Justice George Bermingham of the High Court, former Supreme Court judges John Blayney and Catherine McGuinness and Judge Peter Smithwick.
A large Law Library attendance included senior counsels John Gleeson, Michael Collins, Denis McCullough and Eoin McGonigal. Former Fine Gael ministers present included Richie Ryan, Dick Burke, Nora Owen and Tom O’Donnell.
The Fine Gael attendance also included Ceann Comhairle Sean Barrett, Minister of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton, TDs Eoghan Murphy, Pat Breen and Peter Mathews, and MEPs Gay Mitchell and Mairead McGuinness, as well as party strategist Frank Flannery, former MEP Mary Banotti, former senator Maurice Manning and former general secretary Peter Prendergast.
The wider world of politics was also represented by former PD minister of state Liz O’Donnell, former ceann comhairle Seamus Pattison, former Fianna Fáil minister Michael O’Kennedy and independent Senator Rónán Mullen.
The Irish Timeswas represented by editor Geraldine Kennedy.
Mr Costello was buried later at Deansgrange cemetery.
