IT WAS timely and touching to read how Sister Frances is coping with enforced and enduring separation from her hospice project ‘baby’ (her own metaphor), in the wake of what appears to have been cowardly, malicious and legally unproven allegations.

While there seem no limits these days to who among the great and good, high and mighty may turn out to have had ugly past faults, Sister Frances still strikes as a remarkably unlikely fit for that scenario.

Meanwhile, what further irony that anyone who has devoted her own professional life and energies to the management of premature bereavement, should herself be experiencing anything so cruelly comparable and on the flimsiest of pretexts; this being, though, not just ‘anyone’, but the founder of yet another, sadly necessary yet thus entirely worthy, world-leading Oxford institution.

The unconditional and practical love inherent in any charitable enterprise may often risk rejection by a vulnerable or volatile beneficiary, but even so ghastly a stroke of ingratitude should certainly not, of itself, invalidate the fine work quietly achieved there or yet to be so.

I am sure many across our region and further afield, of all faiths or none, will continue to uphold Sister Frances in our thoughts and prayers and to support the twin hospices however we can, not only in the quiet hope that we may be spared any direct personal need to avail ourselves of their clearly excellent and compassionate ongoing services.

Many of us know others who have come to do so, and speak highly and warmly of such sensitive support through their own harrowing days.

IAN MILES
Vintner Road, Abingdon