THE beloved priest who served Ilminster, Chard and Crewkerne has died while on a pilgrimage in Spain.

Father Basil Postlethwaite was the priest for the Parish of the English Martyrs at the time of his passing last month, and has previously served in Scotland, Bristol, and in El Salvador during the civil war.

Father Jock Dalrymple, from St Andrews and Edinburgh, was a friend of Father Basil’s.

He said: “Basil Postlethwaite was born in Warrington and educated in Manchester.

“He was ordained priest in St Ninian’s on December 3, 1983 and was an assistant priest there until August 1985.

“In 1987, he transferred to St Margaret’s, Gorebridge, and in 1989 went to El Salvador where he became parish priest at Dulce Nombre de Maria in Chalatanengo.”

When Father Basil travelled to El Salvador, the country had already been in civil war for 10 years.

In his eulogy, it said: “The serious and uncompromising side of him or maybe just plain stubbornness much have stood him in good stead when he lived for eleven years in a country torn apart by civil war.

“He saw fellow priests murdered and yet carried their coffins.

“He said mass as bullets came through the church window and moved the bodies of dead soldiers from the town square rather than risk allowing any of his parishioners doing it.

“These are just some of the events that made him the priest he was.

“But through all of this he knew his faults and as he once said – when I preach I am really talking to myself.

“Those of us who were lucky enough to travel with him may have noticed that in his hand baggage, without fail, never out of his hand, were his brevity and his tablet.

“The former used quietly and discreetly on the plane or in the coach and the latter to record God’s beauty in nature, architecture or friendship and ever the missionary, he shared it through Facebook with as many people as wanted to see it.

“He never walked the easy path. Bishop Declan described his as ‘a sinner learning to be a saint’ and he has left us that opportunity to continue to learn to be saints.

“Thank you Father Basil for being you and touching our lives.”

He returned to UK in February 2000 and served as parish priest, first at Slamannan and then at St Joseph’s, Bonnybridge, in 2004.

In 2005 he moved south and became chaplain at St Mary’s, Shaftesbury, and then St Edward’s School, Cheltenham, until 2013.

His last appointment was as parish priest in English Martyrs, serving Chard, Ilminster and Crewkerne.

David Kerr, from the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, said: “It is with sadness that the Archdiocese has learned of the death of Father Basil Postlethwaite, a priest of St Andrews and Edinburgh from 1983 to 2014 and, more recently, of Clifton Diocese in England. He was 66 years old.”