Scottish Catholic Observer

ON SUNDAY, parishioners of the Holy Family parish in Dunblane will mark the 20th anniversary of the shooting that killed 16 young children and their teacher.

Mgr Basil O’Sullivan was parish priest there when Thomas Hamilton took a gun and committed mass murder at Dunblane Primary School, and 20 years later he is still there.

“As we have every year without fail, we’re having an anniversary Mass,” he said. “We pray for the injured, we pray for the bereaved and those who still suffer every day.”

Many of those involved in the aftermath of the shooting will attend. Mike Robbins, the Provost of Stirling, who helps represent the Dunblane/ Bridge of Allan ward on Stirling Council, and who was chairman of the Dunblane Primary School Board at the time of the incident, will give a reading, as will Sally Kennedy, the current headteacher.

“Waiting in the school [after the shooting] we had no idea of what was happening outside and how the school was being inundated with love and sympathy from people everywhere,” Mgr O’Sullivan told the SCO. “All Dunblane was being loved and prayed for by good people all over the world. People from the media would ask where God was that morning. The strange thing was that no one on the ground, the people I was dealing with, no one asked me that question.”

After the world moved on, the people of Dunblane had to find a way to heal.

He finds hope in the special stained glass windows (above), which feature doves representing those lost rising towards Heaven.

Mgr O’Sullivan also believes that Dunblane’s most famous son, tennis star Andy Murray, has done a lot to help people move on.

“He has been a wonderful ambassador for the town,” the priest said.

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—This story ran in full in the March 11 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.