They came by the hundreds, some clutching rosaries, others dabbing at their tears with crumpled tissues. Friends, parishioners, and coal-country Catholics came to St. Mauritius, this old church in Ashland, a forgotten corner of the Pennsylvania coalfields, to say their last farewells to Father Leo.

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Their footfalls echoed against the vaulted ceiling as they filed into the church. The smell of perfume and cologne and the florid stench of grief mixed with the sharp tang of lilies and incense. Their grief was leavened with awe and pride as the pageant began. 125 white-robed priests from as far away as Philadelphia and Harrisburg marched in for the funeral mass for the Rev. Leo Heineman, a burly, boisterous priest, who, the bishop maintained, died as a hero of the faith, ministering to a troubled woman in a troubled marriage.

Never mind that the woman, Mardell Eames, was not a member of his parish. Never mind that he had driven to the woman's house - some 20 miles from the church - despite the objections of her frail but belligerent husband. Forget that Father Leo had, as it would later be reported, disregarded the sage advice of two state troopers who had been summoned to the house to settle a dispute between the husband and the priest and that the priest had instead lingered there. This wasn't the time to dwell on questions like exactly why the priest had spent part of the afternoon sprawled on a rectory bed with Mardell Eames, drinking whiskey and counting the collection from that morning's mass. There was no mention of the claim by Heineman's killer, David Stewart, a scrawny, 5-foot-10 Scots-Irish Protestant, or that he had killed the hulking priest in an act of self-defense.

This wasn't a moment for shades of gray. This was a funeral for a priest, a man of faith who had "laid down his life," the bishop said, "for those in need."

And what a man he was.

Six feet three inches tall and chiseled, "he...always had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and whatever was on his mind came out of his mouth," Sister Elizabeth Monica, a teacher at the nearby Immaculate Heart School, said to The Allentown Morning Call on that September day in 1990. To her, and to the others who gathered at St. Mauritius Church that day, the Rev. Leo Heineman was a hero, John Wayne with a Roman collar. He was quick with a laugh and quicker with a joke, some parishioners later said. Former altar boys who had served the morning masses with him remembered him as a provocative and fun-loving type, the kind of "goofy" but down-to-earth guy, some would later tell an attorney, who enjoyed "handing out cigars to the altar boys on Sunday afternoon if it was the last mass."

And now he was dead, shot through the chest at point-blank range by a man he barely knew, all because he had, as the Allentown Diocese maintained, tried to guide the killer's wife through the perilous straits of a rocky marriage.

But even with that, there was room in the church's heart for mercy for the 70-year-old killer who was, at that moment, locked away in the Columbia County Prison.

"Would you forgive the poor old man?" Rev. Thomas Edwards asked the assembled mourners.