'People still feel they have to keep their heads down,' commented one observer, at the funeral in west Belfast, writes Gerry Moriarty
Little Bronagh McConville released a white dove of peace over the grave of her grandmother Jean at her grave in Lisburn on Saturday afternoon.
It was the final symbolic act on a day marked with symbolism. It was a day of great sorrow but also of relief and release. The surviving McConvilles wanted it to end with a sign of hope - hence the dove flying over the grave where the remains of Jean McConville now rest with her husband Arthur.
Earlier around 500 people gathered in St Paul's Church, off the Falls Road in the heart of republican west Belfast, for the funeral Mass. The church was comfortably full but not overflowing.
The McConville extended family accounted for more than 100 of the people there. There was a good turnout from the Lower Falls area where Jean McConville had lived, but for such a high-profile, heart-rending funeral one expected more.
"People still feel they have to keep their heads down," commented one observer, which would seem to account for the fact that compared to a republican funeral the congregation was relatively modest. There were no senior Sinn Féin figures there.
The McConville brothers shouldered their mother's coffin down the Falls Road after the Mass, past the Sinn Féin offices, past the huge mural to Bobby Sands, past the republican graffiti, past the signs complaining of state collusion in murder.
The cortege stopped for a minute outside Divis Tower, close to where IRA men and women seized her from her children. It then drove on to Lisburn.
Relatives of others of the disappeared carrying lighted candles joined the McConvilles in the church.
Gardaí who assisted in the search of Shelling Hill Beach where her remains were found also attended, as did Mr John Wilson and Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, joint heads of the commission charged with recovering the bodies of the disappeared.
Jean McConville was reared a Protestant but became a Catholic when she married. Representatives of other denominations were in the church, as were other leading politicians such as Mr Mark Durkan, Ms Bríd Rodgers, Mr Alex Attwood, Mr Martin Morgan, Mr Alban Maginness, of the SDLP; the Alliance leader Mr David Ford; Prof Monica McWilliams of the Women's Coalition, and Dr Steven King, the Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble's adviser. The Police Ombudsman, Mrs Nuala O'Loan also joined the mourners.
Jean's daughter Helen and her husband Mr Seamus McKendry who led the campaign for the return of her remains were in the church with the rest of the McConvilles, but the divisions between two sides of the family sadly were still evident.
Bishop Patrick Walsh and Msgr Thomas Toner delivered powerful sermons, reflecting the horror of her death at the hands of the IRA in December 1972.
Presbyterian minister, the Rev Ruth Patterson at the end of Mass read out memories from the McConvilles of their mother.
The IRA said it killed Jean McConville because she was an informer, but the family deny this and insist it was because she placed a pillow under the head of a critically wounded British soldier who was shot outside her door.
"Mum was just the kind of person who would have helped anyone who needed help," said Rev Patterson in the family testimonial.
The testimonial continued: "I still want a public apology to clear our mother's name. The IRA tarnished her name, saying she was an informer. I have missed having a mother all these years. But what I missed the most was the opportunity to grow up as a family with my brothers and sisters.
"We were all split up after she was taken away. It makes me very angry when I think about this. When they took our mother away they may as well have killed us all too.
"I think that after the funeral that will be it for me. I still hate the IRA but the hatred I felt throughout my life is not as intense. That day on the beach [when Jean's body was found] I felt a lot of my anger lifting.
"In the last few weeks I am not as angry as I used to be." And the McConville memorial concluded, "We are going to make sure she has the kind of funeral she wanted. We have sent her off well, and that is not just because of what happened to her, but because she was our mum."