MacGowan’s funeral Mass took place Friday, Dec. 8, at St. Mary of the Rosary Church in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland. His sister Siobhan MacGowan said Shane sometimes accompanied their late mother to Mass there.
His funeral Mass last week began with individual displays of 19 objects that were meaningful to MacGowan, which were held up for the congregation between the altar and the coffin by the principal celebrant, Father Pat Gilbert. They included a statue of Buddha, a DVD of “The Godfather,“ and a copy of James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.“
The Buddha statue was included “because Shane was a lover of all religions, and particularly Buddhism,” said MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clarke, who described each object at the lectern before it was given to the priest.
After Gilbert held up the statue over his head with two hands grasping the bottom, Clarke said: “Is that the first time they’ve held up a Buddha in a Catholic church?”
Most of the music during the funeral Mass was nonreligious.
After the first reading, from the Book of Revelation, a man and woman performed “Haunted by the Ghost,” a love song MacGowan composed.