During his homily, Bishop McGuckian said of his predecessor, “Archbishop Noël always spoke with great affection for the place and the people from whom he came, in Monaghan. Above all, his admiration and affection for his parents and the warmth of his family home came through in many stories that he enjoyed telling. Two stories – about his parents – stand out for me and I think they tell us something important about the sources of the life he chose and was called to lead.
“The first was a story about his father, John, who was perhaps his first teacher in the art of diplomacy. Younger people will find this hard to imagine, but the family had just got a television for the first time. There were only two, or at most three channels to choose from, but a row broke out among the children about what to watch. According to Noël, the television was immediately unplugged and taken back to the shop and that was that. For the next few years there would only be a television hired for the Christmas season and then returned. In the meantime, it would be a home of reading and learning; the important lesson that fights over superficial material things were not to be tolerated.
“The second story was about his mother Molly – Archbishop Noël spoke of a mother who always sought to provide the best she could and whose creativity in the kitchen reflected the seasons. In the summer she would send the three children out in the heat of the day to pick elderflower from the hedgerows and she would make ‘elderflower wine’ patiently waiting each summer for the fermenting to take place. A few years later when Noël had made his Confirmation and taken the pledge, his mother denied him this homemade treat with its hint of alcohol, another lesson – commitments should always be kept. Now, this was a story that made its way out across this Diocese and elderflower cordial became a thing that often appeared on the table at Confirmation dinners.
“From those two stories I want to point out that Noel learned early – and he greatly valued the lesson – that a good life will be one based on principles and values that have to be learned and put into practice. There was no doubt that the values espoused and expected in that Catholic home in County Monaghan in the 1950s were based on the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus and his Church.
“I had the great privilege of working with Archbishop Noël here in Down and Connor in the Living Church project and later still as part of the Irish Bishops’ Conference and our shared work in Justice and Peace. His dream for the diocese was of all the baptized, clergy, laity and religious working together for the mission of the Church and for the common good. He admired equally the priest who ministered with joy, the business person who worked and provided jobs that sustained many people in work, the religious who were to be found on the front lines of poverty and injustice, the teachers who strove to make a better society through Catholic education and to bring Christ to young people.
“Many people gathered in Brussels on Friday to give thanks for his work in COMECE, Justice & Peace Europe and his most recent role as Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union. All of us who worked with him in all of these different arenas will have witnessed his teasing out, in very sophisticated ways, the essential link between faith and culture.”