Hard-living Irish musician received last rites before he died
Irish songwriter and former Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan (pic) received last rites before he died November 30, his family said. “Prayers and the last rites were read during his passing,” the family said in a written statement.
Dec 15, 2023

By Matt McDonald
Irish songwriter and former Pogues lead singer Shane MacGowan (pic) received last rites before he died November 30, his family said. “Prayers and the last rites were read during his passing,” the family said in a written statement.
MacGowan, 65, is best known as the co-author of the 1987 Christmas mega-hit Fairytale of New York, which still enters the charts each December, more than 35 years after its initial release.
He was also the frontman and founder of the Pogues, a London band that fused Irish traditional music and punk rock, along with occasional forays into other genres.
MacGowan was raised a Catholic and often used Catholic imagery in his songs, though he did not practise the faith for most of his adult life, which included decades of heavy drug and alcohol use and frequent infidelity.
Yet he told an interviewer that he often prayed to Jesus, Mary, St Martin, St Francis and his dead relatives who he thought were in heaven.
“His anxiety around loss and death, including almost certainly his own, was presented as one of the reasons behind his strong Irish Catholic faith,” wrote his biographer, Richard Balls, in his 2021 book A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane MacGowan.
Irish Catholic identity
Born and raised in England to Irish parents, as a boy Shane visited Ireland often, staying with his extended family in a stone cottage in County Tipperary for as long as six weeks at a time. The arrival of Shane and his parents and sister would cause a stir, and his aunts would get emotional to the point of crying.
“When they came to leave, the tears would flow all over again and holy water would be sprinkled over them to keep them safe,” his biographer wrote.
The Ireland side of the family was steeped in Catholicism. They had collies named Peter and Paul. As a lad, Shane used to walk to daily Mass with his aunt Nora as she prayed the rosary on the way. His aunt would also tune in at 6pm every night to the broadcast of the Angelus on RTE, the national television network.
MacGowan was fascinated by the Catholic Church.
“I might have become a priest if I hadn’t been a singer,” MacGowan told his biographer.
Drugs, alcohol, violence
As a teenager, MacGowan got into drugs, particularly LSD, which affected his grip on reality and led him at 17 to a six-month stay at a psychiatric hospital. His loving but permissive parents did little to stop his drug use.
For most of the rest of his life, MacGowan drank large amounts of whatever alcohol happened to be near and consumed large amounts of illicit substances, including heroin. His famously self-destructive behaviour led the author of a humorous 2000 book about Irish culture to call it Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?
Even while almost constantly inebriated, he pumped out songs, which drew praise from fans and well-known musicians for their sound, imagery, detail, candour, comedy, and connection.
Intercession
MacGowan’s faith wasn’t doctrinaire. He explored Eastern religions and philosophies, and he called himself a “free-thinking Catholic.”
But he felt a strong connection to the Church.
“The Sacred Heart of Jesus and a statue of Mary holding Jesus have pride of place on the mantelpiece of his flat in Dublin to this day and he wears a crucifix around his neck,” his biographer wrote in 2021.
MacGowan’s songs explored degradation and violence, but often with humour and a hint of redemption.
Lorca’s Novena, for instance, on the 1990 Pogues album Hell’s Ditch, includes a murder but also a suggestion of resurrection, linked to women in a nearby chapel praying “Mother of all our joys / Mother of all our sorrows / Intercede with him tonight / For all of our tomorrows.”
MacGowan had been in declining health for years. A 2015 fall fractured his pelvis and left him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. The time in the hospital helped him stop using heroin, but he continued to drink alcohol.
In 2018 he married his longtime on-again/ off-again girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke, who took care of him in his declining years. He spent most of the last four months of his life in a hospital.
Clarke, MacGowan’s younger sister Siobhan, and their father (in his 90s) were at MacGowan’s side when he died at a hospital in Dublin. --CNA
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