Homily for the Funeral of Kevin Ward SAC
Kevin didn’t like eulogies, and particularly the eulogies that you would hear at priests’ funerals because, he maintained, most of the time they were lying! But, of course, he would expect me to ignore any advice he had given.
We begin by listening to the Gospel of the Beatitudes, which tells us the central truth of our faith. So many things can be difficult. There could be so many things which weigh us down, but there is a happiness which is deep inside us, that is greater than whatever comes our way, and that is the happiness which comes from our faith in Jesus Christ.
And it says here, “Happy are the merciful; they shall have mercy shown them.” If there was one characteristic of Kevin’s priesthood, it was mercy. Mercy freely offered and given to anyone who approached him. You never heard words of judgement, but mercy.
He was blessed in his vocation, which was always for him a source of security and happiness in his life. And he was blessed with his family, who supported him for so long and in so many ways.
His mother, whom he loved dearly – you wouldn’t guess it from the telephone conversations, because in those years before mobile phones you would hand him the phone, and you would say, “It’s your mother,” and he’d say, “Hello, yes, yes, no. Yes, bye-bye.” But there was a deep love between them, which she spoke of often.
I remember once going to her house for tea and posh sandwiches, and she really spilled the dirt on Kevin. She couldn’t wait to start telling me, giving me enough information to keep me going for years!
They were saying last night how surprised they were to hear that Kevin had been so good at cleaning and washing up, but it would have been no surprise to his mother because she said, “I don’t mind cleaning the house, but when Kevin comes home, the one thing I hate cleaning is the grill. So every time Kevin comes home, the first evening we always have a big grill.” And then I’d disappear, and he’d start cleaning and scrubbing and polishing until it was immaculate – for us to start again.
Then she said that the next day we would always go out for a drive. We’d have a lovely drive, and then Kevin would come back, run upstairs, and the next thing there’d be smoke billowing out under his door. I was not supposed to know that he smoked, but I knew.
And I asked her, “What did you do then?” and she said, “I thought I’d bring up the subject.” But with Kevin, you didn’t just bring up the subject and start speaking openly. So, for his birthday, she brought him some pipe tobacco – six or seven packets. And I asked, “What did he say?” and she said, “He just took them, went up to his room, the smoke came billowing out under the door, and it was never spoken of again.”
He was blessed in his sisters, his sisters who gave him such stability, love and support. Maura, who gave him such help when he was in England and was constantly going from hospital to hospital. Maura, who would come over whenever necessary, journey with him, stay with him and help him.
And then, when it shifted to Ireland, it was Ronnie and Ronnie’s sainted husband, Patrick, who were such a source of help and support, driving down, taking him to hospital appointments and doing all of that. And Kevin was not quite taking it for granted, because he never wished to put people out, but he was so grateful and so aware of that loving support.
I have known Kevin for 51 years. When I went as a student to San Silvestro in Rome, Kevin was in the General House as nothing less than Secretary to the Rector General.
In my first few months there, it was total chaos because I had just come from here. I had to have papers ready for college, which would be typed up and done properly by Kevin. It was like having your own form of AI all those years ago. He would take my scrappy notes and type them up. There would be headlines, they would be footnoted, and they would make sense by the time he was finished with them.
That was such a help to me at a time of crisis that we became firm friends, and that remained for all of these years.
So Kevin, while he was in Rome, was wonderfully indispensable to the Society. One of the things which he did was go to the dentist and have a lot of work done on his mouth. When the bill came in, there was an emergency meeting of the General Council to find out what had happened.
I can remember exactly the cost – £12,000. It was 1976, and I knew that at that time you could build a three-bedroom house for £12,000.
So Kevin had a policy that when a crisis arose, he would put his head down and keep going. And when they said, “How did this happen?” he said, “I have never understood all those zeros in the lira. It’s 1,000 lira for a cup of coffee, so how many thousands did I think it would take to do a bit of work on my teeth!”
And that was it!
So Kevin went from Rome to Amwell Street in London, and I remember that just before I was ordained, my father died suddenly. I was in San Silvestro, and I went home. There was a long wait of three hours at Heathrow Airport before getting the connecting flight to Cork.
Kevin came out on the Underground, took me back to Amwell Street for lunch, so that I would not be sitting out there on my own. We had gammon steak with mashed potatoes, and I can’t remember if there were vegetables. But he did all of that and came out with me again.
That is something that has stayed with me all my life – that I was supported and cared for. That gesture gave me a whole sense of belonging, of being understood and supported in a time of crisis.
Kevin then went to Barking and then to Hastings, where he lived happily with Father George for many years. Then I moved to Hastings, and we spent twelve happy years together.
In Hastings, he was famous for his spirit of service. He taught me as a priest what the spirit of service means. He had absolutely no interest in meetings or paperwork or anything. If someone was sick, he would go to them. If someone was in hospital, he would call them – not for long visits; they would be very, very quick. But they would be frequent and very helpful, and would really raise the spirits of so many people whose days were coming to an end.
He spent all that time doing this with all the ordinary things that were happening in life.
At that time, we had just begun online shopping, and I thought I’d have a go. So I did my first online shopping from Tesco. As I was coming back that evening, there was a huge hold-up on the High Street. When I got to the house, I found out why – what was blocking the street was the delivery of my order.
Like Kevin and those little problems with the zeros, I had a problem with zeros in my order from Tesco. I came back and you couldn’t get into the kitchen. There were twelve dozen pairs of bananas, and there were tins and tins of tomatoes reaching up to the ceiling.
I said to Kevin, “What did you think?” and he said, “I don’t know, it just looks like food to me! I thought you were having a party!”
Fortunately, it was a Saturday, and I was able to auction it all off to the poor parishioners on Sunday and made a reasonable profit!
Kevin was able not to get mired in details about where the food came from or what was happening with this paperwork or that. He concentrated solely on the mission which he had, which was to serve the people among whom he was working. And he did that faithfully.
He was also a great liturgist. When he was ordained, the very Sunday afterwards he said his first Mass in London in the Oratory because he had a great love for the Latin Mass and all that kind of pomp and circumstance.
But he was never someone for exaggerating. In Hastings, we had a change in the Funeral Rite, and this liturgist came from the diocese to speak about the importance of doing it lavishly and properly. His central idea was that every coffin should be covered with a large white pall that was a symbol of baptism.
Kevin thought this was a wonderful idea, and the next time we had a funeral, I came down and there was this little, tiny cloth – a finger towel – on the coffin.
I asked, “What’s this?”
And he said, “It’s the great white pall!”
From there he moved to London, to Greenford. The two of us moved to Greenford, and he continued that ministry which people still remember and treasure and give thanks for – visiting the sick, celebrating the sacraments and, then, of course, celebrating funerals.
He came to me one Christmas Eve and asked me to give him a hand with something. He was booking a return flight with Aer Lingus to Dublin, and he said, “At the beginning of this process they were telling me that there were loads of flights, and now they’re telling me that there are none left.”
And I looked at what he was doing. He had booked twenty-two return flights!
And I asked him, “Why did you do that?”
And he said, “Every time I was coming towards the end, it said, ‘Book another flight!’ So I did.”
I rang Aer Lingus and spoke to the very kind man who said, “I can’t cancel all of them because sometimes he ticked so many boxes about insurance and everything that I can’t get out of it. But I can cancel most of them, on condition that you get his credit card and shred it!”
Normally, he didn’t do his own bookings after that.
During his time in London, he became so ill that they told him that if he wanted to go back to Ireland, he needed to do it immediately. They said the time was very short, and he went back to Dublin in a wheelchair.
In the hospital here, they were so good and so professional, and they said that this was not the end yet. And I think he has been here for ten years, with great care.
And so he had a whole new life here in this house, a new life where there were those who helped him and there were people who gave him such great help over the years, who made him feel treasured and appreciated, and whose own ministry he continued to offer.
During his time in Greenford, because of his ministry of visiting the sick, he got an unreasonable number of funerals that were celebrated in the parish.
His last funeral was one in which he kept his head down and kept going, which was his policy through life. During this funeral, the funeral director was trying to get Kevin’s attention, but he kept his head down and kept going.
The funeral director came up to him after about fifteen minutes and said, “When are you going to bring in the coffin?”
He had forgotten that part of it!
And so the poor woman was a little bit late for her own funeral, which made the family extremely pleased because she had been a head teacher and had driven them insane with her punctuality.
Her son-in-law, the previous evening, when they were closing the coffin, said, “Now, Mum, try to be on time for your own funeral!”
And she wasn’t!
And they were delighted, because this wasn’t their doing but Kevin’s. He had shown her such love, devotion and service all the time she had been sick, and they were able to thank him and be grateful for all of that.
Then, while he was here in Thurles, this was a time of growth for him, a time when he put his head down and kept going in spite of all the things which might happen.
And here during this time, Veronica and her husband would come all the way down from Dublin and drive him to all his appointments. It was as if the second tranche of his family kicked into gear so that he would know he was loved, supported and helped in every detail.
And even when that became difficult, they would send someone else here in the community who volunteered to help him – the volunteers in this community who reached out to help him, who did those boring things like changing those awful stockings, day and night, and helping him in so many ways.
They made all of these last years so rich, faithful and important for him as well.
And then, towards the end, he was beginning not just to have his head down, but to look up and see that now there was some place else where he needed to prepare to go.
He really did want to live longer than his mother, but it began to become clear to him that the end was coming.
My sister and I went to see him, and he asked for the Sacrament of the Sick. He said, “Now I need to begin to get ready for another journey.”
And he got ready for that journey, which he is now celebrating.
It is our hope for him as we gather here and say to him:
“May the choirs of angels welcome you; may Christ, the Good Shepherd, take you in his arms and lead you safely home.”
Rest in peace.
Tom Daly, Thurles, September 5, 2026