Campaign to make Scottish factory girl a saint

Daily Telegraphy

The Pope would consider beatifying a Scots biscuit maker if it can be proved that she performed a miracle, the country's most senior cardinal has revealed.
Devout Catholic Margaret Sinclair has been credited with making a blind woman see, helping an arthritic patient walk, and saving the life of former disc jockey Jimmy Savile when he was two.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, said he had met Pope Benedict XVI to discuss Miss Sinclair being made a saint.
Speaking in a BBC Radio Scotland documentary to be broadcast this month, the cardinal said Sinclair, who worked in the McVitie factory in Edinburgh, now needed only to have a miracle ratified by the Church.
Cardinal O'Brien said: "Margaret led a very holy life and consequently the Church can ask her intercession with regard to a miraculous cure. On one of my visits to Rome to see the Pope, I asked about the possibility of Margaret Sinclair being eventually beatified and canonised.
"The Pope said to me, get your people to pray for a miracle. That is what we are asking people to do." Sir Jimmy Savile was born in 1926, the year after Miss Sinclair died, but tells the programme she saved his life after he had a bad fall as a child.

"The Pope said to me, get your people to pray for a miracle. That is what we are asking people to do." Sir Jimmy Savile was born in 1926, the year after Miss Sinclair died, but tells the programme she saved his life after he had a bad fall as a child. His mother found a prayer card to her in Liverpool Cathedral and begged her to intercede on Sir Jimmy's behalf.
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He said: "The doctor had been around that day to see me and had actually written out the death certificate. I decided not to die at the precise time that my mother was actually interceding with Margaret Sinclair. I have absolutely no doubt at all she should be made a saint."

Sinclair was declared Venerable - meaning she lived a wholly virtuous life - in 1978.
Cardinal O'Brien said: "If she were canonised, I think it would give ordinary people a very great boost, particularly those who are finding it hard in their lives.
"If an ordinary person was beatified and canonised in Scotland it would mean a very great deal to our people here in this country."
Miss Sinclair was brought up in poverty in a two-room Edinburgh basement. One of nine children, she left school at 14 to start an apprenticeship as a French polisher, but left to work in McVitie's on the outbreak of the First World War when polishing materials became scarce.
At 23 she became a nun in London. She became known as Sister Mary Francis of the Five Wounds, spent her days in prayer, meditation and devotions.
She died of TB only two years later, in 1925, and calls for her to be made a saint began almost immediately.
In 2003 her remains were moved from Mount Vernon Cemetery in Edinburgh to a shrine at St Patrick's, just off the Royal Mile.
Fr Ed Hone, priest in charge at St Patrick's, said: "Her reputation for holiness goes way back to her being an ordinary girl, spending hours in prayer."

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