[3] The Bradburnes were cousins of the playwright Terence Rattigan and were more distantly related to the politician Christopher Soames.

He was planning to continue his studies at a university, but at the outset of the Second World War he volunteered for the Indian Army, with which his mother's family was connected; she had been born in Lucknow.

A second attempt was successful, and Bradburne was rescued by a Royal Navy destroyer and returned to Dehra Dun in India.

For the next sixteen years, Bradburne wandered through England, France, Italy, Greece and the Middle East with only a Gladstone bag.

He tried to live as a hermit on Dartmoor, then went to the Benedictine Prinknash Abbey, before joining the choir of Westminster Cathedral as a sacristan.

Bradburne's wanderlust was coming to an end in 1962, when he wrote to a Jesuit friend in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Fr John Dove SJ.

This is where in 1969, Bradburne found Mutemwa Leprosy Settlement near Mutoko, 143 kilometres (89 miles) northeast of Salisbury (now Harare).

He stayed in a tin hut, just outside the perimeter fence, for the last six years of his life but continued to minister to the lepers.

He was buried in a Franciscan habit, according to his wishes, at the Chishawasha Mission Cemetery, about 18 kilometres (11 miles) northeast of Salisbury (now Harare).

In July 2001, the Franciscan priest Father Paschal Slevin, OFM, presented a petition to Patrick Fani Chakaipa, Archbishop of Harare, for an inquiry into Bradburne's canonisation.

Father Slevin commented: "I have no doubt that John died a martyr in his determination to serve his friends, the lepers.

[15] The 40th Anniversary of Bradburne's assassination was marked both at Mutemwa with the pilgrimage and then an exhibition and talks at Westminster Cathedral on 21 September 2019, where his relics were displayed for the first time.

A postulator, Enrico Solinas, a lay judge at the Umbrian Interdiocesan Ecclesiastical Court of Perugia, was appointed in 2018 and is taking the cause forward.