Make leper colony martyr first British saint for 400years

Supporters ask Vatican to canonise holy John

CAMPAIGNERS are pleading with the Pope to make an English missionary the first British saint for 400 years.

They say John Bradburne is a martyr for his work at an African leper colony which led to his murder by guerillas in 1979.

And supporters say two miracles after his death qualify him for canonisation by the Catholic church, making him our first saint since Scottish Catholic martyr John Ogilvie, who died in 1615.

Martyrdom is also step towards sainthood as is leading a selfless, charitable life devoted to God.

Bradburne, from Westmorland, was killed while caring for lepers at the Mutemwa colony in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia.

He was captured by ZANU-PF guerillas in the civil war. They bound Bradburne’s hands, took him on a forced march and humiliated him, making him dance and sing, eat excrement and dangling young women in front of him.

The rebels offered him his freedom so long as he left the country and abandoned his flock.

He refused and, when he knelt down to pray, they shot the 58-year-old in the back with a Kalashnikov, leaving him halfnaked by the side of the road.

TUMOUR

Before he died, Bradburne said he had only three wishes – to help lepers, die a martyr and be buried in his Franciscan habit.

Campaigners, including Bradburne’s niece, Celia Brigstocke, are convinced of Bradburne’s power to perform miracles.

Mourners at his funeral said they saw drops of blood beneath his coffin, even though no blood was found inside when it was opened. Others claim that, a decade ago, a man was cured of a brain tumour by praying to Bradburne. With the support of the Archbishop of Harare, they have raised the money to fund a Vatican probe into his canonisation.

Bradburne was the son of an Anglican rector. He served with the Gurkha Rifles in the Second World War and joined the Franciscan Order as a layman in 1956.

He became warden of the leper colony 90 miles from Salisbury, where sufferers were made to wear bags on their heads to cover their soress. He built them a church, wrote each leper a poem, and taught them to sing in Latin.

Even today, the colony plays his music, beaten out on drums by lepers with no hands.

SERVICE Bradburne during the war