Scottish Catholic Observer

Mr Kennedy’s son, Donald, and former wife Sarah Gurling, whom he married in 2002, were among the mourners. From the world of politics Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander, John Swinney, Michael Moore, Sir Menzies Campbell and Willie Rennie joined the congregation in St John the Evangelist Church in Caol, to remember Mr Kennedy, who died aged 55 on June 1.

Mgr James MacNeil, administrator of Argyll and the Isles Diocese, was the principal celebrant and Fr Roddy McAuley, parish priest, preached the homily. Fr Pat Brown, chaplain to the Westminster Parliament, and Mgr Thomas Wynne of St Margaret’s, Roy Bridge, a friend of the Kennedy family, concelebrated,

Mr Kennedy’s coffin, surrounded by yellow and purple flowers, processed through Caol before an internment service at Clunes, Achnacarry, on the shores of Loch Lochy. A piper played Highland Cathedral as the coffin was carried to the hearse and mourners lined the streets.

During the Mass, 14 pupils from St Columba’s Primary School, Lochyside, which Charles Kennedy attended as a child, sang the psalm O God, you search me and you know me.

In his sermon Fr McAuley remembered Mr Kennedy as a much-loved man with ‘great humility’ and described him as a ‘back-bencher’ at the church due to his reticence to take the lectern, sparking a laugh from the congregation. “Charles Kennedy was a humble man,” he said. “When Charles’s parents died and Charles said a few words in the church, he wouldn’t come up here to the lectern but insisted on speaking outside the sanctuary, from the floor.”

Before the service, Mgr James MacNeil, said the requiem Mass would be a ‘deep moment for the family and for the community in which Charles worshipped—an expression of our faith.’

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—This story ran in full in the June 19 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.