Labour MP Mike Kane was among those who delivered moving tributes to Sir David Amess in tributes at the House of Commons yesterday.
Kane, MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East and a practising Catholic, quoted Karl Rahner, Julian of Norwich and the Gospel of John in a speech praising Sir David’s religious convictions. He noted that the MP died on the feast day of St Teresa of Ávila.
His speech followed tributes from prime minister Boris Johnson, leader of the opposition Keir Starmer many other MPs who had known Sir David as friend and colleague.
“As has been alluded to, Sir David was a man of deep Catholic faith,” said Kane. “The Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 10, reminds us that the Lord came not just to give life but to give it in abundance, and David lived his life in abundance, a joyous service both to his constituents and here in this House.
“We would see him late at night, often in a tuxedo, going from charitable concern to charitable concern, championing the causes he believed in. He looked good in a tuxedo – no Daniel Craig, but this was no time to die either.”
He described attending the canonisation in Rome of St John Henry Newman, just before lockdown, and how in some confusion that followed the Mass, his wife got stuck in a lift in Rome with Sir David and two other Conservative MPs. Afterwards, his wife said of Sir David: “What an utterly, utterly wonderful man.”
Kane, who founded the Catholics for Labour group in 2017 and is a longtime supporter of Catholic charities, and a vocal advocate for faith issues in Parliament, said: “He believed fundamentally in the social teaching of the Church: dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity to the nth degree when it came to Southend, a preferential option for the poor, and care for the environment. That meant that he came with unique views on things such as life, death, Europe and animal protection, sometimes in chime with his party, sometimes in chime with the country, but sometimes not.
“He channelled the 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich, who said, ‘All things shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’ That is difficult for us all here today.”
Suggesting also an “Amess amendment” to confer a legal right to receive last rites, he continued: “He did not die a martyr, but he died, as has been said, doing the things he loved and helping constituents. He would have known that the theologian Karl Rahner said that power is a gift from God. That portcullis on the top of our letterheads gives us all that power, whether on the Front Bench, in opposition or on the Back Benches. Let us recommit to Sir David today that we will use that power for the common good.”
Sir David, 69, had been an MP since 1983 and was married with five children.
At the Catholic Union’s 2021 Autumn Gathering on Saturday 16 October, his friend Sir Edward Leigh MP, who entered parliament with Sir David in 1983, “struggled to hold back tears” paying tribute to his departed colleague. A noted pro-life campaigner, the MP for Southend West was, the Catholic Union said in a statement, “a champion of the causes he believed in, no matter the political risks”.
Lord Alton of Liverpool, who with Sir David welcomed Mother Teresa to Parliament in 1988, said in a statement that the Essex native’s Catholic faith “informed his passionate commitment to the very right to life, to human dignity and to the common good”.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, paid tribute to Sir David as a man who “carried out his vocation as a Catholic in public life with generosity and integrity”.
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