Because who wanted to doubt that Celtic in Munich may not need a biblical, but still a miracle to achieve the round of 16 of the Champions League; The playoff first leg against FC Bayern was lost 1-2. Chris McLaughlin, 45, who has also met burns, laughs on the phone when you talk to him about it. Then McLaughlin says on the one hand that Tommy Burns had never asked for a victory of Celtic on their knees. On the other hand: “Miracles Happen.” Miracles happen.
:The President of all football presidents
42 years club boss of FC Porto, cross -sport 2591 titles: No functional has shaped football in Portugal as the now deceased Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa – but the man who also made Mourinho is very in peace.
McLaughlin is 45 years old and British official, Celtic fan and Catholic. And among other things, he can sing a song of miracles because he coordinates a group who wants to achieve nothing less than the canonization of the Tommy Burns through the Catholic Church. The paths of Catholic bureaucracy are as long as that of the Lord is unfathomable, so that a decision will take place. The processing fees that like to go to the hundreds of thousands are another hurdle. But if he is really raised to honor the altars, Burns would have the second Scottish saint since the Reformation – “and in my knowledge of the first footballer,” says McLaughlin.
And if you ask Tommy Burns’ son Jonathan, who today trains football teams at the Boston Bolts in the USA, he says that he “felt something like a deputy impostor syndrome” when he learned from the initiative . “I know my father would be honest and incredibly grateful. And probably in shock. “
How should it be different? This story not only leads to the world of deeply felt religiosity, but also into the Scottish folklore. The original idea, says McLaughlin, goes back to a priest named Robert Farrell from Glasgow, who belongs to the ultra -conservative opus dei, got to know and appreciate Burns and said shortly after his death that Burns fulfilled a basic condition for canonization: he have died in the call of holiness. And that, so Farrell meant, must be examined according to the rules of the church.
After his death in May 2008, 30,000 people were on Glasgow’s streets – “and in St. Mary there were 40 or 50 priests” “
Everything had taken on concrete forms after a “Tommy Burns Supper”; It was organized according to the model of the famous “Robert Burns-Supper”-dinner in honor of the Scottish national poet Robert Burns, in which Haggis, i.e. sheep inferior, are eaten, with plug-in beet and potatoes and the poem “to a haggis” is declamated.
A year ago, the Bishop of Paisley – a diocese neighboring with Glasgow – was given – and he had given a few advice to collect arguments for burns. Since then, the relatives have been talked to, certificates were collected, documents collected. It is now necessary to prove that Burns has accomplished Veritible miracles. And God doesn’t know that easy. Because Burns did not have taken the shortest way to canonize, the martyrdom.
For this he already became a Celtics column saint during his lifetime. Among other things, because he “had an almost spiritual relationship with the club”, as the retired journalist Hugh Keevin reports that he wrote burns’ autobiography. Who wants to think it was a coincidence that burns played football for the boys’ guild of the Glasgower parish of St. Mary? There he was launched himself, but also Celtic Glasgow. 1887, at the time as an organization to relieve poverty in the city’s workers’ districts. “It was a truly charitable initiative, for the benefit of the poorest among our brothers and sisters,” said Pope Francis at an audience in 2023. “How much football has changed since then!”
Tommy Burns celebrated his professional debut in 1975 under the trainer Jock Stein, who was worshiped in Glasgow. In episode he was supposed to play 352 times for Celtic, get six championships and five Scottish trophies before he said goodbye to Ajax Amsterdam in a friendly on December 6, 1989, ended his career at FC Kilmarnock and became a coach. He also worked for the Scottish Association, at times as an assistant to the former national coach Berti Vogts – and thus as a colleague of Rainer Bonhof, now Vice President of Borussia Mönchengladbach.
On the sidelines of the game of Borussia near Union Berlin, Bonhof was unable to teach a miracle evidence on Saturday. But he probably testified that he met Burns “as a very fine, super -right, totally honor guy”. Bonhof was new that Burns had a strong closeness to the Catholic Church. “But I don’t want to say that I am surprised,” he said.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Burns Jr. shows that this is not surprising. “He lived his faith privately, never rose over others, neither as a person nor as a Catholic,” he says. “But he never hid him either. He even talked about it very openly in the west of Scotland. And sometimes it could be a little difficult. “
How closely the proximity of the Tommy Burns was to the church could be seen, among other things, at the funeral service after his death in May 2008. There were 30,000 people on the streets of Glasgows. “And there were 40 or 50 priests in St. Mary,” says McLaughlin.
The fact that someone came up with the idea that Burns had lived the life of a saint was no accident. It was not due to the worship of Mary (“there was always a statue of our dear wife on his bed,” says the son), but also because he took detours on the way home to cheer up sick children in the hospital. Such things. On the morning of his own death, he sent flowers to the sister of Celtic professional Scott Brown: she too was dying. Who knows who he still assisted. “We believe that his life was so exemplary that people should learn about it,” says McLaughlin. And no, it’s not about idealizing him because he was a famous footballer. “We would do that if he had cleaned toilets.”
So far there has only been the case of a nun that has been healed by an illness
McLaghlin is probably aware that the desire to be canoned with him is surprised. On the other hand: why not? Yes, most saints are former church employees. Sisters, priests, cardinals, popes. But the figure of the “Celebrity” is a modern phenomenon. Hope should give them that the church in Catalonia has made a considerable piece in the canonization of an architect: Antoni Gaudí, master builder of the Sagrada Família, is well on the way after a 20 -year process. In the case of Gaudís, the minimum number of two “miracles” is considered to be sufficient.
At Burns you have not been that far, conceded McLaughlin. “We have nothing that would show the proof of a miracle in the sense of Rome in the current stage,” he says. But there is “the case of a nun from Glasgow, which reports on the heavenly intercession of Burns and an appearance, and which was healed by an illness,” he says. “We trust that we encounter further such stories.”
And if not, football helps exceptionally. Jonathan Burns, the son, wants to watch the game in a pub on Tuesday. He does not have great hopes for Celtic’s progress. “But maybe we experience the miracle of Saint Thomas in Munich,” he says, and you can literally hear him smile.