Is Zimbabwe on its way to having its first Catholic saint? And might that saint be a quirky Englishman who was murdered during an armed insurrection against the apartheid colonial administration of what was then called Rhodesia?
Maybe.
But while Zimbabwean Bishop Raymond Mupandasekwa of Masvingo believes that John Bradburne will soon be officially canonized by the Catholic Church, the bishop is sure that Bradburne is already a saint in the eyes of God.
“If the voice of the people is the voice of God, then John Bradburne is already a saint,” the bishop told The Pillar, during a visit to the international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, in Germany.
Bradburne was born in England, the son of an Anglican vicar. As a young man he felt a strong spiritual calling and eventually converted to Catholicism. He flirted with the idea of becoming a priest, before deciding that wasn’t his vocation.
His spiritual searches and travels eventually landed him in what is now Zimbabwe, where he lived with the Jesuits for a while, before a chance visit to the leper colony of Mutemwa, in the company of a friend, Heather Benoy.
What he saw there would determine the course of the rest of his life.
“The lepers were covered in filth and untreated running sores”, wrote Didier Rance in his biography: “John Bradburne: Vagabond of God.”
“Worse was to come. Surprised by the arrival of strangers, the lepers retreated to their huts and re-emerged with a sack or a blanket covering their heads. John and Heather witnessed a leper with a sack crawling through mud along the ground on all fours. Stupefied, John demanded to know what was going on, to discover that the lepers were forced to cover their faces, because they were too ugly to be seen.”.
That day, Bradburne decided that he was where God wanted him. He dedicated the rest of his life to serving lepers, vastly improving their living conditions but, above all, showing them that they were loved, and upholding their dignity.
His dedication, even when the region became dangerous due to insurgent activity, made him very popular among the local population.
However, a few years ago rumors spread that his beatification process might be stalled because it could be politically controversial if the first saint of Zimbabwe, a country where race relations are still a sensitive subject, should be a white man.
In the violent and often tragic history of Zimbabwe in the decades following independence, race has often played a central role — both in cultural conflict and in government policy.
But even in his own lifetime, Bradburne’s example of love and service seemed able to transcend racial divisions.
Kate Mcpherson, from the John Bradburne Memorial Society, told The Pillar that “although there was such muttering early on, this is history now – evidenced by the Zimbabwean bishops supporting John's cause and the country recently declaring him a national hero.”
Bishop Mupandasekwa concurred, saying “he is the most popular saint in the eyes of the people, even before canonization. The most popular! His shrine is visited by at least 100,000 people a year, and they come from January to December”, he explained, adding that the idea of his race presenting difficulties is “not true at all.”
“People love him, we have many witnesses from as far back as the 1970s, including old lepers who were looked after by John, and when they talk about him it is like they are still seeing him. They don't see him merely as a white man at all, they see him as a saint, and as one of their own. People would love to have him declared a saint, because that is what he was.”
What may be an obstacle to the advancement of the beatification process, which is still in the diocesan phase, is the infrastructure of the shrine itself, the bishop said.
“The only thing that perhaps is stopping growth in devotion to John Bradburne is the state of the shrine. There is no place for people to stay when they visit, unlike other shrines where you would find lodgings, where people can sleep and then spend the day. This is a huge challenge. The infrastructure does not allow for big crowds, it can't handle them. If only we could develop that, we could see more people come.”
Mcpherson, who is Bradburne’s great-niece, said that these plans are already underway.
“There are lots of plans to improve Mutemwa, but this is all dependent on money. There are plans to build a new church to house all the visiting pilgrims so they can say Mass, along with new toilets and accommodation. Future plans are definitely to create a better infrastructure,” she told The Pillar.
Eagles, bees and the dancing sun
Despite the fact that Bradburne has not yet been beatified, let alone canonized, many people attribute miracles to his intercession, and Bishop Mupandasekwa himself said he witnessed a miraculous event there in 1994.
“The devotion to John Bradburne is huge. I am also one of those who has a devotion to him. I am a witness of the miracle of the dancing sun. I led a pilgrimage to Mutemwa one day and went up the Chigona mountain, where he used to pray. It was about 3 p.m., and after praying our rosary we looked up and we could see the sun dancing. I was squinting, wondering if this was really true, and it danced for five minutes. We were amazed!”
Mcpherson told The Pillar that she too is sure the miracle took place, and that the society is in possession of a video of it.
Besides his love for the lepers he served, Bradburne was an avid poet and enjoyed dancing, although a friend of his brother’s, who danced with him at a party, later said “he can dance, but it was like dancing with Jesus Christ.”
John also nurtured a great love for animals, and many of the purported miracles associated with him, both during his life and after, are related to them, from bees to eagles.
While he lived with the Jesuits, he would sometimes become exasperated by the number of visitors who would come calling, disturbing his writing. On one occasion he is said to have prayed for respite, and soon enough a swarm of bees installed itself in his room, buzzing around him while he wrote, and keeping unwelcome guests away.
In Mutemwa, Bishop Mupandasekwa said, “there is a little hut where he used to sing in praise of God all night, and sit in prayer. And the bees sometimes come and cover the whole of the hut, and after a bit they fly away. It is very much associated with the presence of John in the place. He has not left.”
In 1982 Angus Shaw, a sceptic who was annoyed by stories of miraculous bees, visited Mutemwa to try and dispel the myths. When he returned to his car it had been invaded by bees, and when he finally made it back to Harare his apartment was overrun by the insects as well.
Another episode involving animals raises deeper theological questions.
John kept a pet eagle, Haggai. She was attached to a perch by a long rope, but one day when a male flew by, Haggai pulled so hard that she broke loose, trailing the rope behind her. A distraught Bradburne found Haggai a few days later. The rope had become entangled in the branches of a tree, and she had died.
On the first anniversary of Haggai’s death, “John laid flowers on her grave, and prayed to the Blessed Virgin to give him a sign that his eagle was now free and happy in paradise. Shortly afterwards an enormous eagle, almost completely white, appeared in the sky,” Rance wrote.
“The eagle hovered over the pine copse where Haggai was buried, and then flew off in the direction of the valley. John never again saw such a bird, but for him the sign was obvious.”
His passion for animals was one of the reasons he identified with St Francis of Assisi. When he became a tertiary Franciscan, he took to wearing the brown religious habit for the rest of his life.
‘He wrestled with the evil one, and triumphed’
In September 1979 a pair of young mujibhas – the name given to groups who aided the guerillas, but ranked beneath them – kidnapped John from Mutemwa and marched him to their hideout. They mocked and humiliated him, though witnesses say that he was serene the whole time, despite knowing that he was likely not going to escape alive.
The next day, they took him to the guerrillas, hoping to receive praise for capturing a white man, but were instead reprimanded because John was known to be a friend of the Africans.
The mujibhas were humiliated and promised to return him to Mutemwa, but instead took him to another rebel group who agreed to put him on trial. Even so, he was declared not guilty of any crime. However, he had seen the groups’ hideouts, and they feared that the Rhodesian security forces would make him talk. They offered to transfer him to Mozambique, but he said he would not go anywhere except back to the leper colony, where he was needed. The rebels released him from his bonds, ate and drank with him, then shot him dead.
At that time his good friend Fr. John Dove, who was in prayer and unaware of what had happened to Bradburne, said he “experienced a moment of agony which he felt was neither his own nor Christ’s.”
Worried about reprisals if the security forces found his body there, local villagers tried to hide it, but were driven away every time they came near, either by the sound of chanting, unexplained rays of lights or, at one time, by the presence of a large white bird hovering over the body, rising and descending as if to protect it.
Bishop Mupandasekwa was nine years old when John was killed, and never met him. But the bishop did know Fr. Dove, “the Jesuit who invited him to Africa and to Zimbabwe, who was really his mentor, so for years I have heard a good number of stories from people who knew John and who were witnesses to his life in Mutemwa, and I am convinced that he is a saint.”
“I have preached in many Masses celebrating his life in Mutema, and it has been refreshing to be there, to see the great devotion to John Bradburne, and the high regard for him, and the desire for him to become canonized. It is a big thing in Zimbabwe today,” he concluded.
His biography quotes one pilgrim answering the question of why so many people visit the site: “They come because they sense this place is holy. They sense that in this place someone wrestled with the evil one and triumphed; that this person became more human as a result and so approached the divine more closely. And they feel that this was not for himself alone, but for all of us.”
John Bradburne was declared a Servant of God by the Church in 2019, and his beatification process continues.
The postulator of his cause, Italian canon lawyer Enrico Salinas, did not respond to a request for comment, but in his latest update published on the website of the memorial society, in November 2024, he wrote: “Personally, I hope that 2025 will be a ‘special’ year for John’s cause and that the jubilee announced by Pope Francis will coincide with the possible end of the diocesan information process.”
