My dear friends, A renewed word of warm welcome to Canon Leo’s brother James and family who join us today as we say goodbye to their beloved brother and offer our sincere condolences to them and to his sister Marie in America, and to all their many relatives and friends, as well as brother priests and parishioners who remember Leo and his many years of service in Edinburgh and far beyond.

Leo was a cheerful and faithful priest, long-serving and with a dash of courage and tenacity that took him with some of our priests to Nigeria to work in the Diocese of Bauchi as a missionary in a very difficult, even dangerous, moment for that country. 

Among other things, he was spiritual director to the seminarians of this Archdiocese and Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Scotland; but above all, he was a pastor of souls in our parishes, latterly in Sacred Heart and Christ the King in Grangemouth, but elsewhere too, and he will be gratefully remembered by many. 

He loved working in the parish, and as his health declined through old age, he found it very difficult to leave that life and move on.  I am very grateful to his family and friends and all those who helped to look after him, especially the Sisters of Nazareth at their house in Glasgow. 

For my own part, I first came across Leo over 35 years ago, and my first impressions of him have never left me.  We were on pilgrimage with HCPT, a group which has been bringing young people with special needs to Lourdes for a holiday with Our Lady. 

He went with different groups, but I think when I first saw him it was Group 89 from Fife, and I can still see him and the others wearing a very jaunty glengarry to mark them out. 

But more than that, he was the first priest I saw signing at Mass for the deaf and, as it were, dramatizing the Gospel and the homily of the priest doing the speaking. 

I don’t remember who the celebrant was or what he was saying, but I remember Leo communicating the Gospel in this way with a smiling enthusiasm, and it’s a moment I’ll never forget. 

The readings for today have been chosen with the blessing of Leo’s family, and they’re intended to reflect something of him and what he gave us as an example of his Christian and priestly spirit.

In the first reading from Second Corinthians, Paul speaks to us of being hopeful, and not losing heart. 

We place our hope in the Lord: that he who raised Jesus from the dead will raise us up with him, and bring us into his presence on the last day. 

This word of comfort and encouragement is placed by Paul in a certain context: he says that, even if our outer self is wasting away, through old age or sickness, we remain confident that our inner self is being renewed day by day; Paul describes what we go through here as a “momentary affliction”, which will prepare us for “an eternal [..] glory, beyond all comparison”. 

This made me think of Leo: the last time I saw him, he was no longer himself.  He had reached the stage where, not only was he unable to speak to me, I don’t think he recognised me, as his condition had reached that stage.  He was ever more distant, not the man we had once known at all.  

And yet our faith and our hope in God’s mercy teaches us that Leo, the man we once knew, is still there, to be respected, to be cared for, to be loved. 

We are to endeavour to see that, even then, and even now resting in the Lord, Leo is and will be the person we once knew in happier times.  To comfort us, St Paul continues, “We look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal”.  This temporary, mortal “tent”, which is our earthly home, will one day, sooner or later, for a certainty, be rolled up and put away; but in God, we have an eternal dwelling place that can never spoil or fade away.

In the Gospel passage from St John, the Lord declares that his disciples will one day hear the voice of God and will rise to the “resurrection of life”, something that Leo surely aspired to throughout his life as a priest and as a disciple of Jesus, the Lord of the living and the dead. 

This is an obvious motive for choosing this gospel passage.  But I had a second reason for this choice of reading, as St John describes our relationship to God as disciples of the risen Lord in a way that applies to us here today. 

Throughout today’s gospel, as elsewhere in St John, Jesus talks of hearing the voice of the Son of God, and how hearing his voice transforms us.  Today, in several ways, Jesus says “the hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” 

He goes then says, “the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, and those who have done good, to the resurrection of life”.  Even at the start of this passage, Jesus says, “whoever hears my voice and believes him who sent me has eternal life”. 

Jesus is quite unequivocal here.  Even Lazarus, who is dead, will be called out of his tomb by the mighty voice of God; he will return to life and to the arms of Martha and Mary, his sisters.  This is a beautiful and significant moment in John.

But for us here and now today, there is a problem.  What if you can’t hear?  It is not as if those who cannot hear are excluded from the faith, or excluded from the resurrection to life. 

So, the question becomes, how can we place the good news more easily before those who wish to know and love the Lord if they have difficulty hearing his voice?  Canon Leo noticed this too, and he had an answer to it.   

And so, for much of his priesthood, he patiently found time to share the good news with those whose hearing is impaired in some way, and he worked to communicate the Lord’s call to love and life by learning to use sign language. 

In doing so, he therefore became in some way the voice of the Lord of life to others: Leo encouraged others with the Lord’s own words, he reached out to them, and he comforted many hearts with the Word of God through his ministry of signing. 

And typically, he did so with his winning simplicity, his smile, and his tenacious enthusiasm.

This was only one part of a varied and long life of ministry in the diocese and beyond, but his ministry of signing is one that sets Leo apart in a way for which many will be especially grateful. 

Along with all those he touched in this life with God’s word through his life and ministry, in Scotland and abroad, may Leo one day himself hear the voice of God, and be raised to life forever with the Lord and all his saints in paradise.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.  May he rest in peace.  Amen.

Archbishop Leo Cushley, St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, 11 August 2026.