THE Catholic Church in Scotland has launched a fresh bid to have a young Edwardian woman who once worked in the McVities biscuit factory declared a saint.

Margaret Sinclair was declared "Venerable" by the Catholic Church in 1978, two steps away from sainthood, but since then her cause for canonization has largely stalled.

Now Archbishop Leo Cushley, of the St Andrews and Edinburgh Archdiocese, has started a new campaign to have Margaret, a one-time trade unionist, declared "Blessed" and then "Saint".

However, one ratified miracle is needed before she can be beatified and a second is required for the Pope to declare her a saint.

A miracle is said to prove that a person is in heaven and thus able to intercede with God on behalf of those seeking help on Earth.

Archbishop Cushley has appointed Father Joseph McAuley, a parish priest in Cumbernauld, to spearhead the campaign.

He said: "As my delegate Father McAuley will be working closely with me to promote Margaret's cause and to spread the message of this fascinating young woman.

"Margaret led an exemplary life as a lay person, who was very much a modern woman, a woman of her times, and who was also an exemplary religious sister albeit briefly before she died at the age of 25".

Margaret Sinclair was born in Edinburgh's Cowgate in 1900. One of six children, whose father was a City Corporation dustman, she was brought up in poverty in a two-room tenement basement.

She left school at 14 and worked as French polisher during which time she became an active member of her trade union, later finding work with McVitie's Biscuit factory.

In 1923 Margaret entered the enclosed order of Poor Clares in Notting Hill, west London, taking the name Sister Mary Francis of the Five Wounds.

She brought relief to the poor of that city for a short time before she died of tuberculosis in 1925.

During a visit to Scotland in 1982, Pope John Paul II described her as "one of God's little ones, who through her very simplicity, was touched by God with the strength of real holiness of life, whether as a child, a young woman, an apprentice, a factory worker, a member of a trade union or a professed sister of religion".

Both Archbishop Cushley and Father McAuley are keen to get people praying to Margaret for favours. This will involve a new information drive throughout schools and parishes.

One of those who previously called for her canonisation was disgraced television star Jimmy Saville, who once said his recovery from an illness at the age of two was among the evidence which had been sent to the Vatican in support of her sainthood.

Archbishop Cushley added: "Almost immediately after her death in 1925 a devotion to Margaret spread and spread rapidly and was very strong for many decades.

"This is something that Father McAuley and I are hoping to build upon and strengthen to spread in the Archdiocese of St Andrews & Edinburgh, throughout Scotland and, please God, beyond".

Archbishop Cushley is also instituting a new monthly mass at the Margaret's tomb in St Patrick's Church in the Cowgate, taking place on the first Tuesday of each month starting in January.