In his homily at the Memorial Mass for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor in Westminster Cathedral on Wednesday 4 October, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said of his predecessor: “He was truly a great gift of God. We miss him.”
Cardinal Nichols was the principal Celebrant at the Mass for the repose of the soul of Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the tenth Archbishop of Westminster. Princess Anne represented the Queen; the Duke and Duchess of Kent and Princess Michael of Kent were also present. Archbishop Edward Adams, the papal nuncio to Great Britain, represented Pope Francis. As well as several members of the Murphy-O’Connor family, representatives of over 50 organisations with which the late Cardinal had been associated also attended the Mass.
“All who knew him will have recognised, as I do, the two great loves that filled his heart: a love of life, expressed especially through family and friends, and love of his Catholic faith, expressed in his enduring love for the Church,” Cardinal Nichols said in his homily.
“These two loves,” he continued, “intertwined and inseparable, gave him a strong foundation for his life’s work, with all its difficulties, failures and considerable achievements. They also meant that his sense of joy and fun was never far from hand, to the delight of those around him.”
He recalled Cardinal Cormac’s final days. “It was with these great gifts that he approached the most important step of his and every life: that of dying well. He kept a lightness of spirit, telling me how strange it was that in his family the doctors had all died first, followed by the priests and last of all the bishop. It was an advert for ‘the good life’! In his last days, he showed a wondrous simplicity and humility, serene in the sense that his life’s work was done and that it was time to go home, to his Heavenly Father who, he trusted whole-heartedly, would embrace him in mercy and forgiveness.”
At the end of Mass, Cardinal Nichols prayed at the late Cardinal’s place of burial, in front of the tenth Station of the Cross.
Christine Remy, of the parish of Our Lady and St Catherine of Siena, Bow, in East London, was one of many in the congregation who attended the Mass because they had a personal memory of the Cardinal. “He visited my parish in 2003,” she said. “He didn’t leave until he had spoken to everyone who was there. He was lovely. He told me I should train to be a teacher. I’ve never forgotten it.”
Fr Joseph McCullough, the chaplain at the Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea, where the Cardinal died on 1 September, remembered his cheerfulness and serenity in his last days. “He gave me a good lesson in the art of dying well,” he said after the service. “Cardinal Cormac showed us how to live well, and he showed us how to die well.”
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