VE Day 2025: Poignant handwritten 1945 VE Day sermon discovered after lying untouched in drawer for 80 years

A moving sermon handwritten by a vicar after VE Day in 1945 has been discovered by his family after being hidden in a cupboard for decades.

Reverend Francis Richards was a minor canon at St Paul's Cathedral during the London blitz, before moving to become vicar of Crediton in Devon in 1940.

He handwrote all of his sermons and stored them in notebooks in alphabetical order in a dresser in the corner of his home - which were untouched for decades.

His daughter Jane Richards, 91, inherited his home when he died and uncovered the catalogue.

The retired GP, aged 11 in 1945 when victory was declared, was recently showing one of them to the Archdeacon of Exeter, when it fell open to his sermon of May 13 1945.

She has shared his words for the first time since they were heard in his church in Devon on May 13 1945 - the first Sunday after VE Day.

In the sermon Rev Richards - who was on fire warden duty in St Paul's Cathedral the night a bomb landed on the steps and bounced down them - speaks of the "great events" of the past week and how victory for long periods "seemed remote and unattainable".

An excerpt reads: "During this past week great events have come to a final issue, and we have celebrated the day of victory in Europe to which we had long been looking forward.

"No doubt you have all been reading reviews of the progress of the war through these years in your newspapers, and I need not quote instances here to remind you how often or for how long, the prospect of victory seemed remote and unattainable, and many of us lived through moments when we wondered whether we ourselves should be spared to see it come to pass."

Sunday May 13 1945 was the Sunday after Ascension day and Jane said she was particularly struck by the parallels her father drew between VE Day and Jesus' Ascension into heaven after his resurrection, as per the Bible's telling.

One part reads: "Do you suppose it was chance that brought VE day into the same week as Ascension Day? I do not think it was, but whatever anyone may think about that, the resemblances which connect the two events are no less remarkable. One is a type of the other."

He acknowledges in his sermon it was a bittersweet victory for many people.

He said: "Our Lord came back with wounds in His hands and feet and side - let that not be forgotten by those who have come to the end of this German war wondering whether they can or ought to rejoice, because there has been so much sorrow; our Lord’s experience is the same - the joy that was set before him was only reached through death and wounds."

The sermon ends with Rev Richards talking about the work that needs to be done to "make liberty available again to everybody".

He said: "Our victory in Europe is won, but there is a long job ahead to make liberty available again to everybody. But can’t you see it is a job after God‘s own heart, since he himself is doing the same thing? If God is with us, in the fight, in the sorrow, in the victory, in the rejoicing, in the reconstruction - if God is with us, who can be against us?"

Jane, a retired GP and churchwarden, said she could clearly remember living in Crediton during the war.

She said: "The bombing of Exeter in 1942 is very clearly etched on my memory, because it was a Sunday night and we had to get out. One bomb was dropped, and all our windows fell in. Daddy was up in the tower of Crediton church on watch and realised. Mama got us in a pram and pushed us across the playing field to the local doctor's, who was a friend."

Jane said if her father were here today his reflections on the 80th anniversary of VE Day would probably be to "keep the faith - don't doom".

Four days of commemorative events, from May 5 to May 8, will take place in the UK to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.