TORNADO BY-PASSED THE CHURCHES

BY A STAFF REPORTER THE freak tornado which on Sunday blew up in the Chiltern Hills and tore through a narrow corridor of land in three Southern counties, by-passed Catholic churches without dislodging a tile.
Fr. Cyril Henslow, parish priest of Leighton Buzzard, in
the heart of the worst-hit district, told me : " Down here we came out without so much as a scratch.
When the storm broke on Sunday afternoon, we were busy with our Confirmation ceremony in the Corn Exchange.
" Bishop Parker had made the journey specially to confirm 57 men, women and children from all parts of my scattered parish. There must have been nearly 200 people in the building."
The Corn Exchange—Mass-centre for the area—was unscathed.
Indeed said Fr. Henslow, " there was nothing but the thunderclaps and the torrential rain to tell us in Leighton Buzzard what was happening a few hundred yards down the road in the village of Linslade.
" It was providential that most of the few Catholics who live there attended the Confirmation ceremony. As things turned out, not one of my parishioners was hurt, though the homes of several were damaged."
Fr. Edward McHugh, parish priest of Aylesbury. Bucks. told me that no damage was done to his church or property, and that in neighbouring Wendover also there is not a pennyworth of repairs to be done. Yet Wendover itself sustained the full fury of the tornado.
Priests I spoke to at Olney and Datchet also stated that no church damage was caused locally.