MORE than 60 clergymen from across the North West packed St Peter's Church in Rossendale to say a fond farewell to a popular priest.

Father Gerard Duffy, who died on January 12, was remembered at a funeral service attended by 500 family, friends and parishioners.

Fr Duffy, 74, who served at St Peter's RC Church, in Newchurch, for 26 years, died at Manchester Royal Infirmary after undergoing kidney dialysis treatment.

He has been due to retire to the Nazareth House Convent care home, in Manchester.

The Manchester United supporter was known throughout the region after preaching at churches in Blackburn, Withington, Greengate and Heywood.

Father David Lupton, Rossendale Dean, read a eulogy at the service. He said: "He may not have been permanently happy from one moment to the next but he was in my eyes permanently blessed.

"Only on Christmas night, as I fed him his supper of fish pie and rice pudding, did he tell me he was not, as Alan Bennett said, 'H A P P Y' but he felt blessed with family and friends.

"His fortitude, his intelligence, his wit and humour never waned.

"Over the past 30 years I have been on many holidays alongside Fr Duffy. On the last, we went - together with boxes, machines and dialysis piled up high - to the convent at Littlehampton.

"The nuns down there called us the Goodwood Pilgrims and prepared us a lovely picnic overlooking this wonderful racecourse.

"In front of us was a lone bookmaker. I asked Fr Duffy if we should offer him a drink so I did and the bookmaker looked at me and said 'ask your dad if he would have a free £1 bet'.

"I went across, he was mortified but he took the £1 and lost anyway."

He added: "His deep faith sustained him even unto death. Through the weeks, months, years of his illness, in moderation and in severe acute phases, and in the utter misery of the final weeks as the outer man was falling into decay, I found his spirit and his great fortitude very endearing."

Fr Duffy leaves his three sisters, Margaret, Rita and Monica, and his three brother-in- laws, Frank, Denis and Ken.

He was buried in the grounds of St James the Less, in Rawtenstall, alongside Father Vincent Lang, former Parish Priest, from 1966 to 1976, and close to Father Henry Cashel, who built St Peter's Church.