About 1,000 well-wishers have joined Andrew Chan’s family in north-west Sydney for a funeral service celebrating the “short but fruitful” life of the 31-year-old, who was executed last week in Indonesia for drug offences.
Chan’s brother Michael was among the pallbearers who carried the casket into the Baulkham Hills church on Friday morning. He said his brother, who converted to Christianity and became a pastor during his 10 years on death row in Bali, had shown that “people deserve second chances in life”.
“Even when we have a heavy burden hanging over our heads we can change into a better human being,” he said.
He recalled “stupid arguments” with his brother over whose rugby league team was better. He would honour one of Chan’s “last wishes”, he said, and grudgingly let his son Kai follow Chan’s team, the Penrith Panthers.
“Andrew, you used to say that you looked up to me. Now, little brother, I look up to you,” he said.
Salvation Army major David Roper led the service, which had been planned by Chan and the woman he married two days before his death, Febyanti Herewila-Chan.
“If you don’t know the boy, be very careful judging the man,” Roper said.
Roper, a longtime family friend, had counselled Chan in the minutes before his death on 29 April on the Indonesian prison island Nusa Kambanang.
“When I stood before him I was overwhelmed with my love for him and devastated by the tragic waste,” Roper said of those last minutes before the firing squad execution.
“He was prepared to meet his maker,” he said. “I saw great courage and strength, I saw peace and assurance, I saw radiant beauty and joy. I will never, never forget it.”
Photographs of Chan as a child and behind bars flashed on large screens arrayed around the amphitheatre.
Herewila-Chan joked that Chan had made “more preparations for his funeral than our own wedding”.
“The last day, he prayed, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’,” she said.
“While he led the seven other prisoners walking to the place where they were going to kill him, when their voices started to slow down, Andrew told them, ‘C’mon boys, we can sing better than this.’
“When they entered the field they sang Amazing Grace. When he was tied up, they sang 10,000 Reasons, the song that we sang on our engagement day, on our wedding day,” she said.
“They all managed to finish the first verse and the second verse halfway, and then they took him.”
She said Chan had died without a blindfold and wearing his glasses, “because he wanted to look them in the eye”.
“And he ended well.”
A eulogy Chan had written himself was read to the congregation, many in tears: “My last moments here on earth I sang out hallelujah, I ran the good race, I fought the good fight and came out a winner in God’s eyes,” he wrote.
“I leave now in peace and love, I pray that you will all know how I treasure you.”
A close friend, Vicki Baird, who regularly visited Chan on death row, said he was a “totally reformed, rehabilitated and honourable man” who had been a leader among prisoners.
Major Shelley Roper, also from the Salvation Army, asked the congregation to pray that “God bless Indonesia”.
Among the crowd was Julian McMahon, one of Chan’s Australian lawyers, and the family of Myuran Sukumaran, also killed last week, who will be farewelled at a service in Sydney on Saturday.
The crowd stood and applauded as Chan’s casket was carried out. They played 10,000 Reasons, the hymn he died singing, and outside, released 20 yellow and purple balloons into the clear Sydney sky.
