A 16-year-old boy will appear at Aberdeen sheriff court on Friday in connection with the fatal stabbing of schoolboy Bailey Gwynne.
On Thursday evening, hundreds of friends, classmates and local residents gathered at Cults parish church for a vigil to remember the Cults academy pupil, also aged 16, who died on Wednesday afternoon after being stabbed at school.
Welcoming those who had gathered, Rev Ewen Gilchrist said that there was no script for the vigil. “We just know that a terrible sadness has poured out of Cults academy, and as a chaplaincy we felt something had to be offered,” he said.
“We don’t want to fill the vigil time with words. We don’t tell people what to feel or what to think. But we do want to provide a safe and healing place where people can bring their hurt, their bewilderment, their questions, their sadness and even their anger.”
Gilchrist, who was dressed in casual attire rather than the traditional religious vestments, said: “Bailey Gwynne’s family will hear about this and the number of people here and in their darkness they will find comfort”.
He encouraged people to move freely between the aisles, to talk to and comfort one another, light candles or write prayers to hang on the branches of the fairy-lit prayer trees positioned around the church.
One prayer read simply: “We are confused. We are hurt. Bring us peace.” Another offered thoughts for the families of Bailey and the boy who has been charged, saying: “Both have lost sons”.
The mainly youthful congregation listened quietly and attentively, some with their arms around one another, as other local clergy involved with the school offered their own words of comfort.
Paul Watson from St Devenick’s Episcopalian Church struck an ecumenical tone and offered the young people in Bailey’s immediate peer group a powerful challenge. “Are you going to let it be an unmitigated tragedy or are you going to let it, in time, bring you together like no year group has ever been brought together?” he asked.
“I believe in you guys and I believe you can turn this into something you will be remembered for.”
