Whitey Bulger May Get Funeral Mass From Ex-Con NYC Priest

EAST VILLAGE, NY — An East Village priest who IRA gun runners called "the underground general" may give the Boston funeral Mass for mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, the New York Post reported.

A funeral director who provides burial services for poor Irish-Americans asked Father Patrick Maloney if he would conduct the funeral mass for the murderous Boston gangster who was slain in federal prison Tuesday, the newspaper reported.

The death of 89-year-old Bulger, who was convicted of 11 murders and several counts of racketeering, is being investigated as a homicide, federal prosecutors said. He was killed less than a day after he was transferred from a facility in Florida to a West Virginia penitentiary, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Maloney told The Post he was willing to officiate the funeral of the man who was on the run for 16 years as one of America's most wanted men.

“I don’t know the particular position of the church on a known criminal. But then the Lord is plentiful with redemption,” Maloney told the tabloid. “In his own heart and soul, [Bulger] may have changed . . . As far as I’m concerned, he’d be entitled to a Catholic burial. I’d have no hesitation.”

This isn't the reverend's first link to organized crime.

Maloney, an Irish nationalist and fixture of the IRA, was convicted in 1994 for conspiring to hide cash stolen from an armored car by masked gunmen — one of the robbers was using an apartment of Father Moloney’s in Stuyvesant Town and hid $2 million there.

The father has long maintained his innocence and while he was in prison called himself a political prisoner — “Free Father Pat” was graffitied across the East Village at the time.

Maloney did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Patch.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Marshals Service via AP