Fr Eoghan Haughey: Charles Haughey was not bitter about the criticism levelled at him, his brother, Father Eoghan Haughey, said at the funeral Mass.
"The lives of great men are like the high mountains: they always attract the storms. Whatever about the greatness or otherwise of his achievements, CJ certainly attracted the storms. But, thank God, and on this day I do thank God, he came through it all without bitterness or rancour.
"In all of the 30 or 40 years of public life, when so much that was hostile was written or said about him, he never once, to my knowledge, retaliated in kind. Thank God. Never a word in his own defence."
Father Haughey said as a personality his brother had that "indefinable something, that magnetism, that magic quality". He also had style, flair and panache.
"Some may not have liked it, or understood it, so be it. But the style, they say, is the man.
"He certainly lived in the public eye. The media saw to that. But he never lost the common touch and let it be said here today that CJH was a good friend and generous benefactor to the poor and the needy."
He said there was a solitary magnificent piece of sculpture on the front lawn in Kinsealy.
"It is monumental in size, 20 feet tall and heroic in its features. And I hasten to add, brothers and sisters, it is not of CJH. The statue represents probably the greatest Irish hero of them all, Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster. Appropriately, an Ulster hero.
"I think it tells us a lot about CJ and his vision of things. It is a wooden statue and it is carved out of an elm tree off the estate that fell in a storm. I think that was typical of Cathal. He had created something magnificent out of disaster.
"That was one of the great lessons of his life, I think, to overcome adversity, not to quit, not to whinge or moan. There was the symbolism of Cuchulain, the wounded hero, who died standing erect, strapped to the pillar and refusing to fall. There was a lot of that in CJ."
Father Haughey said that running the length of the statue was what looked like a deep wound. "It is a crack in the wood, like an old battle scar. CJ came through many battles, but there were no scars because the wounds had healed. There was no bitterness, thank God, no self-pity."
He said his brother had once said in a television interview that in all the cut and thrust of battle the steel had never entered the soul. "There was no poison in the heart."
He added that his brother had "worked on a large canvas, in broad imaginative strokes", showing concern for society's poor and less fortunate.
"He will be remembered for his contribution to the arts, his work on grand projects such as Newgrange, the reopening of the Erne-Shannon waterway and the restoration of some of Dublin's great public buildings."
As minister for finance his brother had helped take some of the fear out of old age with schemes for free travel, electricity and television licences.
"And there was the north of Ireland peace process which he helped to ignite quietly and patriotically. He did it because he felt it was up to him and his generation to do something about the problem in the North. It was always close to his heart and high on his political agenda."
