Shane MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke has broken her silence, after a priest labelled the singer’s funeral a “circus”.
Pat Buckley, an ‘independent’ Bishop, writes a blog in which he claims to expose “corruption, abuse and criminality in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and internationally.”
The bishop’s most recent blog post, in which he slated Shane’s funeral, was titled: “One rule for Shane MacGowan’s funeral and another for everybody else’s as funeral mass turns into concert!”
Buckley published an insulting blog post, in which he wrote: “The MacGowan Funeral Mass was turned into a 3-hour concert and circus.”
He went on to claim Shane received special treatment due to his fame, and said: “Every day, at funerals the length and breadth of Ireland, bossy priests dictate to bereaved families.”
“But in Nenagh on Friday all rules were flung to the wind and quite literally the MacGowans and their friends could have done what they liked, and the priests would have hollered and clapped.”
Despite the online backlash from the Bishop, Shane’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke has since posted photos of herself and Shane to Instagram and thanked the public for their support and kind words.
She captioned her post: “Sharing love in this world is the most beautiful thing you can do and the most valuable.”I just wanted to say thank you 🙏 for so many beautiful messages of support.”
“I know that each and every one of you has plenty of problems and challenges of your own to be thinking about and you are all so generous and kind and thoughtful and compassionate and I am deeply grateful to you.
“Please take a moment to appreciate yourselves!!! Sharing love ❤️ in this world is the most beautiful thing you can do and the most valuable.”
View this post on Instagram
She reassured fans: “I also want you to know that you really don’t need to feel sad for me because @shanemacgowanofficial is still very much with me in every moment and I feel very connected with him and I feel enormous love ❤️ and encouragement from him and I feel his sense of humour and his pure joy 🤩 and presence as if he is actually a part of me and he is never going to leave me because he is in my heart ❤️”
Victoria ended her post and said: “I love that so many of you are celebrating his music and his life and his warmth and compassion and grace and beauty and it is a powerful thing to witness.
“There’s a lot of people that I want to individually thank for making his funeral so special and magical 🧙♀️ and I will probably be doing it for a long time!!!! Bless everyone everywhere always ❤️ photo by @andrewcaitlin.”
