SECONDARY DIOCESAN PATRON
After Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception, the diocese has St Thomas Becket as patron. In our Northampton Cathedral, with some searching, we can find a stained-glass window depicting Saint Edward, and also, in our own Kettering church there is a reminder of St Thomas Becket. Looking from the altar, there is a window on the right side, behind the benches, of the general diocesan coat-of-arms, with three crows on it. In the side aisle, next to the confessionals, is another coat of arms of the bishop Laurence Youens, who had our church built – and you can see the three crows again with the lilies of Our Lady also.
St Thomas Becket died as a martyr, defending the freedom of the Church in 1170, in his Canterbury Cathedral. Pope John Paul II knelt and prayed at his tomb with the then archbishop, Robert Runcie in 1982.
