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JOHN RANDAL BRADBURNE, MISSIONARY - 5 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 5th of September

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VENERABLE JOHN RANDAL BRADBURNE, MISSIONARY

John Randal Bradburne was born on June 14, 1921 in Skirwith, Cumberland, England. A son of Thomas William Bradburne and his wife Erica May he was baptised in the Church of England. John had two brothers and two sisters. Educated in Norfolk, he had a religious experience in Malaya while a soldier during the Second World War. When he returned to England after the war, he stayed with the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey and became a Roman Catholic in 1947. He then was a Sacristan at Westminster Cathedral for some time, visited the Holy Land twice, and lived for a year in the organ loft of a tiny church in Italy. Posthumously nicknamed "Vagabond of God", he played plainchant on the harmonium and recorder, loved birds, and ate but once a day. A prolific poet, he wrote more than 170,000 lines of verse, for which achievement he holds a Guinness World Record.

Fr John Dove SJ invited him to move to Rhodesia and be a missionary helper. This is where in 1969, Bradburne found Mutemwa Leprosy Settlement near Mutoko, northeast of Salisbury (now Harare). It was a cut-off community of leprosy patients abandoned by others. Here John stayed with these patients until his murder in 1979. He cared for them as their warden and stayed in a tin hut, ministering to the lepers.

By July 1979, the Rhodesian Bush War was approaching Mutemwa. His friends urged John to leave but he insisted that he should stay with the lepers. On September 2, 1979, guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army abducted him. He was shot and died on September 5 at the age of 58. He was buried in a Franciscan habit, according to his wishes, at the Chishawasha Mission Cemetery, northeast of Salisbury (Harare).

Since John’s death, the settlement has become a major pilgrimage centre, with thousands gathering for Mass each year on the anniversary of his death.

Sources:

https://angelusnews.com/voices/john-bradburne/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bradburne

https://catholicherald.co.uk/100-years-of-john-bradburne-a-life-lived-fully/



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