Harare, Zimbabwe, May 2, 2019 / 09:24 am
The bishops' conference of Zimbabwe approved Wednesday the opening of the cause for canonization of John Bradburne, a lay missionary to the area in the 1970s, according to a report.
Independent Catholic News reported May 1 that the bishops had given their approval unanimously, and that the cause will be launched Sept. 5.
Bradburne was born in 1921 in England, the son of an Anglican clergyman. He served in the British army in World War II, and he converted to Catholicism in 1947 after staying with the Benedictines of Buckfast Abbey.
He wished to become a monk at Buckfast, but had not been long enough in the Church, and he became a wanderer throughout Europe and the Middle East. He was a prolific poet. He stayed at other Benedictine abbeys, with Carthusians, the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, tried living as a hermit on Dartmoor in England, and became a Third Order Franciscan in 1956.