Will ‘the Mother Teresa of Manchester’ become a saint?
Victorian nun and poverty campaigner lived life of ‘heroic virtue’, says Vatican
A VICTORIAN nun known as ‘the Mother Teresa of Manchester’ is on course to become Britain’s second saint of modern times.
Elizabeth Prout, who died 155 years ago, has been hailed by Vatican theologians as a figure who lived a life of ‘heroic virtue’ – a key step on the road to canonisation.
She is remembered as an activist who opened a chain of schools for poor children and homes for destitute women across the industrialised North West, and is considered to have been ahead of her time in teaching women skills to earn their own living.
Her cause for sainthood was submitted to the Vatican in 2008 for scrutiny by theologians.
A dossier on her is now to be examined by senior Vatican clerics who will then ask Pope Francis to declare Mother Elizabeth as ‘venerable’. At that point, church authorities will begin the search for evidence of two miracles linked to her name, the final hurdle to be crossed in order to achieve sainthood.
Sister Dominic Savio Hamer, Elizabeth’s biographer and a member of the order of nuns she founded, the Passionist Sisters, said Elizabeth was practical, generous and self-sacrificing.
She was born into an Anglican family in Shrewsbury in 1820, but converted to the Catholic faith in her early twenties. At the age of 28 she became a nun and a few years later was given a teaching post in some of the poorest areas of industrial Manchester.
She developed a reputation for tireless efforts in teaching, sheltering, feeding and nursing the needy and opened a chain of schools and hostels across the most povertystricken parts of the region.
Elizabeth started a religious com
‘Courageous faith and perseverance’
munity, which ran into criticism from both within and outside the Catholic fold for alleged revolutionary ideas – which included requiring nuns to earn their own wages to support themselves, and teaching other women how to do the same.
The order was cleared of wrongdoing and approved by the Vatican in 1863. Mother Elizabeth died of tuberculosis in St Helens, Lancashire, in 1864.
The Diocese of Shrewsbury will next year commemorate the bicentenary of her birth in her home town with a pilgrimage in her honour.
The Right Reverend Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, said: ‘Elizabeth saw the great human and spiritual crisis of her time and responded by dedicating her life with courageous faith and perseverance.’ Her canonisation would mean she will become the first
English female saint since Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line and Margaret Ward, canonised by Pope St Paul VI in 1970.
The three women were executed during the religious strife of the reign of Elizabeth I, and were among 40 Catholic martyrs of the Reformation from England and Wales to be canonised. However Elizabeth would be the first modern woman saint.
The landmark move comes less than three months after the ceremony in Rome at which Pope Francis canonised the father of the Engish Roman Catholic revival of the Victorian era, Cardinal John Henry Newman.