Tom Winning was the oldest child of two born to a devout Roman Catholic family in Wishaw, Lanarkshire.

His father, the son of an Irish immigrant from County Donegal, had worked as a coal-miner, served in the First World War, and was then employed in the steel industry.

[1] On losing his job, his father invested in machinery for making boiled sweets which he sold around the houses in the district as a way of bringing in money for his family.

Thereafter he was curate in St Mary's Church in Hamilton from 1953 to 1957 and from 1956 priest-secretary to Bishop James Donald Scanlan of Motherwell.

After a period in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral in Motherwell from 1957 to 1958 he became Chaplain to the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in Bothwell until 1961.

He rejected a plan to renovate and extend St Andrew's Cathedral, as the money would be better spent on the poor of the Archdiocese.

[3][4] On 26 November 1994, he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II and appointed cardinal-priest of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte.

[3][4] Thomas Winning died in office in June 2001, following a heart attack and is interred in the crypt of St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow.