Shrewsbury woman being considered for Sainthood is remembered
A Shrewsbury woman who is being considered for sainthood has been remembered at a special church service.
The life of the venerable Elizabeth Prout, who was born in the town in 1820, was remembered at the Church of St Anne and Blessed Dominic in St Helens, Lancashire. She was also named Mother Mary Joseph.
If she is made a saint she will become the first non-martyr English female saint since St Margaret of Wessex who was canonised in 1250.
In a Mass on Saturday, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, said: "Mother Mary Joseph saw her mission in education as more than imparting information and human skills, rather a vital opportunity in times of social upheaval to pass on faith and the precious inheritance of Christian values.
"Her concern was specifically for young women destined to become not merely factory workers, but the mothers of the next generation.
"She saw in them the Christian women who would be able to bring that feminine dignity and genius, of which Saint John Paul II eloquently spoke, into a coarsened and dislocated social life."
Earlier this year Pope Francis decreed the religious sister to be 'venerable', putting her a crucial step closer to final recognition as a saint.
The Catholic Church will now seek two miracles as supernatural signs from God that Mother Elizabeth is a saint. The first will lead to her beatification, when she will be given the title 'Blessed' and the second will lead to her canonisation.
The bishop, the Rt Rev Mark Davies, has repeatedly called for prayers for the progress of Mother Elizabeth’s sainthood cause.
He suggested that Mother Elizabeth’s heroic service to poor people who were afflicted by outbreaks of cholera and typhoid served as fine example in the contemporary age benighted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mother Elizabeth Prout was born on September 2, 1820, in Shrewsbury and she died from tuberculosis in St Helens, Lancashire, on January 11, 1864, at the age of 43.
The last English female saints were Sisters Margaret Clitheroe, Anne Line and Margaret Ward, who were among the 40 English and Welsh martyrs of the Protestant Reformation canonised by Pope St Paul VI in 1970.
The last non-martyr English female Saint is St Margaret of Wessex, an 11th century Anglo-Saxon princess who became Queen of Scotland after the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror, and who was canonised in 1250.
