Campaign to make Celtic legend Tommy Burns football's first saint

Celtic legend Tommy Burns’s family is backing a campaign to make him football’s first saint.

A bid has been submitted to the Bishop of Paisley calling for the former player, manager and coach to be canonised – the recognition of sainthood in the Catholic Church.

Fan favourite Burns played 500 times for the Hoops between 1975 and 1989, winning six league titles and five Scottish Cups.

After a spell at Kilmarnock he returned to the east end of Glasgow to manage the Parkhead club in 1994.

He spent three years in the dugout and won the Scottish Cup in 1995, Celtic’s first piece of silverware in six years.

However, despite putting together a team that remains fondly remembered by the support for their style of all-out attacking football, he never managed to get them over the line in the league.

At the turn of the century, he returned as a coach and worked under Kenny Dalglish and Martin O’Neill before being made Gordon Strachan’s assistant manager and in charge of the youth system.

He combined this with a role at the Scotland national team, firstly under Berti Vogts and then with Rangers legends Walter Smith and Ally McCoist, who became good friends.

He was still working at the club up until his death from skin cancer in 2008 at the age of 51, which brought an outpouring of emotion from fans who covered Celtic Park in tributes.

Smith and McCoist joined former Celtic players such as Peter Grant and Danny McGrain in carrying the coffin at his funeral.

A campaign has now been launched to make Burns, a devout Catholic, the first footballer to be canonised.

Chris McLaughlin, Philip Church and Robert Docherty have submitted the bid.

If that is successful, it will progress to the Vatican, where the Pope will decide whether Burns should become the second Scottish saint since the Reformation, and first since John Ogilvie in 1976.

He would also become the world’s first footballer to be canonised.

Tommy’s son Michael Burns backed the plans and said it would be a deserved honour but said he didn’t think of him as a saint but “just as my dad”.

He added: “But if you look at what he’s done in his life that we now know, we didn’t know in the past but after his passing, all the letters that came through to us and the things that he did.

“We thought he was working when really he was at hospital visiting children and sick people. He was a really, really good person.

“So if you look at it from that perspective, he absolutely deserves it.”

Those leading the campaign have also been providing evidence of “holy acts” to show his suitability.

McGlaughlin said: “On one occasion, someone approached a member of the Burns family and said ‘Tommy saved my life’.

“This man was suicidal, and somehow Tommy found out about this and talked him out of it.”