Priest's attacker sent to secure unit

A French student obsessed with religion was sent to a secure psychiatric unit indefinitely yesterday for stabbing a Roman Catholic priest in the back after the cleric had helped him.

Father Edward Carroll, 65, "miraculously" escaped death when the knife went within a centimetre of his heart's main artery, the Old Bailey was told. "If anyone deserved divine intervention, it was this good man," said Helena Kennedy, QC, for the defence. Nicholas Top, 27, from Holloway, north London admitted wounding Father Carrol in February last year at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Islington, north London.