One Among Many Martyrs

Moving Funeral for Murdered Devout Christian Charity Worker

Mourners have packed a country church in the Burnley area to pay their respects to a young British charity worker found bludgeoned to death in India last November.
by Maria Mackay

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2007, 8:52 (GMT)Mourners have packed a country church in the Burnley area to pay their respects to a young British charity worker found bludgeoned to death in India last November.

The body of devout Christian Michael Blakey, 23, was discovered in a churchyard in Dharamsala in the Himalayas of northern India, where he had been working for seven months for the charity Tong-Len. He had been bludgeoned to death.

Family and friends filled St John the Evangelist Church in Blakey’s home village of Worsthorne near Burnley where they heard moving testimonies of the compassionate and idealistic nature of the young man who had gone abroad to help the poor.

Mourners at the moving funeral service also heard him described as a genuinely remarkable young man.

Mr Blakey's parents, Paul Blakey and Mary Whitford, looked on close to tears as Anna Owen, the director of the charity, gave a eulogy, reports The Wharf.

Mrs Owen said Michael had "more essential goodness than any young man I have ever met" and was "good to the core of his being", who "not only cared for the poor, but acted upon it”.

Many of Mr Blakey's friends from Swansea, where he attended university and lived before he went to India, were in tears at the service.

An outstanding student, he was awarded a first class honours degree in development studies after studying at Swansea.

Andrew Mews said his cousin Michael had a, "thirst for life" and was passionate about his beliefs.

Blakey’s killer has not yet been caught.