John Bradburne’s life and work comes under the gaze of both cleric and critic

Conferences are planned and papers prepared months in advance, writes Catherine Pepinster. But when the organisers of the Durham conference on “Catholicism, Literature and the Arts” scheduled David Crystal’s session on “Where Next for John Bradburne OFS?”, little could they have imagined that the answer would come from the Vatican just days before he was due to speak. The next step is sainthood.

Bradburne’s story is a remarkable one. The son of an Anglican vicar, he served with the Gurkhas in Malaya during the Second World War. After the war, his search for truth took him to Buckfast Abbey, where he was received into the Church in 1947. After 16 years of wandering across Europe and the Middle East, he returned to England and became sacristan at Westminster Cathedral. By then he was a Franciscan tertiary.