FILM of the exhumation of the body of an Edinburgh nun who is expected to become the next Scottish saint is to be shown in public for the first time.

It forms part of a tour aimed at raising the profile of Margaret Sinclair organised by St Patrick’s church in Edinburgh as part of this year’s Fringe festival.

Sinclair was born into poverty in 1900, worked for McVities biscuit factory and was an active trade unionist before she joined the Poor Clares convent in London and worked tirelessly with the underprivileged.

She died of tuberculosis in 1925 and many have since claimed to be cured after offering up prayers to her memory. Sir Jimmy Savile, who backs the campaign to have her canonised, believes that he owes her his life after his mother prayed to her image when he was seriously ill as a child.

Given the title venerable by Pope Paul VI in 1978, her body was exhumed from Mount Vernon cemetery and re-interred in St Patrick’s in the Cowgate, the church she attended as a child, in 2003.

The proceedings, attended only by a select gathering of senior church figures, were videoed and will now be shown publicly for the first time next month. The tour will also include visits to her former home and the sites of her old and new graves.

Father Edward Hone, the senior priest at St Patrick’s, said: “We are going to run the tour for the first time this year as part of a campaign to widen people’s knowledge about Margaret Sinclair.

“Edinburgh already runs a number of ghost tours which are very popular during the festival so we decided to start one following her footsteps.”

Hone claimed that the images from the graveside would help people to understand Sinclair’s significance. “It is a unique thing and I think people will find it very moving,” he added. “It was only witnessed by a handful of people from the religious community so I think it will be very interesting for the public to see it.”

The last Scot to be made a saint was John Ogilvie, a Jesuit priest hanged for being a Catholic in 1615 and canonised in 1976.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, presided over the blessing of her shrine in 2003 and continues to lobby Rome on the matter. “I am delighted that the Edinburgh Redemptorists have taken this initiative to further raise awareness of Margaret Sinclair in Scotland,” he said.

“Pope John Paul II held up many examples of Christian living throughout his lifetime and among those was Margaret Sinclair. I hope these tours mean more people will learn about this remarkable and deeply spiritual woman.”

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