Amongst the many appalling details from the murder of Sir David Amess, one detail jumped out at me in yesterday’s reports. Father Jeffrey Woolnough, a Roman Catholic priest, arrived at the police cordon stretching across Eastwood Road North offering to administer the Last Rites to the MP, whom he knew to be a practising Catholic. But he was not allowed through. “I was refused entry,” he said later. And he added that, as a consequence, he was unable to issue the sacrament. “I’m so very sorry that I was not allowed to minister to Sir David at the end. The police had their instructions which I have to respect and abide by.”
But why on earth was he refused entry? For a Catholic there is nothing, nothing, more important than being in a state of grace when you die and go to God. That means, ideally, receiving absolution for the sins of your life from a priest.
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