Dunblane's priest reflects on tragedy and friendship

Monsignor Basil O'Sullivan arrived in Dunblane in 1988

"During the lockdown I began to realise that I wasn't as young as I used to be. That I've grown old in the vineyard of the Lord."

Monsignor Basil O'Sullivan has been part of life in Dunblane for 33 years. But now, at 89, he's decided to retire from his role at the Church of the Holy Family.

''You can't leave a place like this without a few pangs... lots of things to reflect on. The ups and downs of life.

"It's a wonderful place to live and I'm very blessed to have been sent here by the bishop way back in 1988."

As parish priest he's seen it all. Births, marriages, personal troubles, family celebrations.

And, death, of course - but in the most brutal of circumstances.

He was a chaplain in the town's primary school, where 16 children and their teacher were shot dead on 13 March 1996.

Sixteen children and their teacher were killed in the shooting

"We woke up to a very bleak March morning and I should have gone to the school that day," he recalls.

"But in fact I had an appointment with the bishop in Pitlochry and I passed the school at 10 o'clock and I didn't see anything.

"I saw no sign of any trouble. But obviously it had happened by then."

In the dark days that followed he offered comfort and support to families. He buried their children.

And as a public figure in the town, it often fell to him to speak to the journalists who came there.

"We had to take the funerals and there was the publicity as well. The media descended on the ministers rather than anybody else because we were available.

"If you're walking down the street with a collar round your neck, they knew who you were."

The tragedy changed Dunblane forever. And, like everyone who lived through it, it changed Msgr O'Sullivan's life.

'We have to pray for them'

Sixteen years later, and thousands of miles away, another strikingly similar tragedy struck: a shooting in Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Msgr O'Sullivan said one of his parishioners, who had lost her daughter in the Dunblane tragedy, came to him at mass that Sunday.

"She said we have to pray for them and we have to contact them.

"So I emailed the priest and I told him how we prayed for him and his congregation and all the bereaved and the suffering in the Church of the Family, having experienced the same kind of trauma as they had, with the same kind of age of children.

"That was the point about Newtown. The children were aged the same as our children."

Msgr O'Sullivan with parishioners when he was made a monsignor

But out of tragedy grew a friendship. On the first anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting, Msgr O'Sullivan travelled across the Atlantic to visit the priest and the community. A Netflix documentary, Lessons from a Shooting: Notes from Dunblane, charted their story.

Now, on his retirement, Msgr O'Sullivan can reflect on the town that has shaped him.

"We were never the same after the shooting. The trauma of it will last a long time and of course we still have memories.

"Of course the poor parents, they're the ones with the broken hearts, they're really the heroes and the heroines of the tragedy because they carried the sorrows of it all.

"Like everything else you have to move on. It's (now) a very happy town. A united town.

"It's a wonderful place to have lived and I feel very blessed."