CAMPAIGNERS have been granted a general audience with the Pope in an attempt to achieve canonisation for two Northern martyrs.

Francesca Dixon was inspired to take up the cause for North-East Blessed Catholics John Ingram and George Swallowell after an annual walk in honour of the former attracted a low number of supporters in Newcastle last year.

Ingram and Swallowell were both brutally executed in 1594 for refusing to renounce their Catholicism after standing trial for treason with St John Boste.

Ingram was executed at Gateshead on July 26, while Swallowell was hung drawn and quartered in Darlington three days later in what became the last public execution held in the town.

Historical accounts of Swallowell’s execution recorded by Bishop Richard Challoner detail how he was beaten across Darlington Market Square and led by “two great fires, the one made for burning his bowels, the other for boiling his quarters”.

When Ms Dixon, of Newcastle, attended an annual walk from St Andrew’s Church to St Edmund’s Chapel in Newcastle last July in honour of Ingram she was surprised by the apathy shown towards the occasion.

Later, while researching into the life and death of Ingram, she became more aware of Swallowell’s martyrdom and launched a campaign to have both recognised as Saints in the same way that their fellow North-East martyr John Boste was.

Ms Dixon and her campaigners have since collected around 800 signatures for the cause and she and supporter Hua Lin have been granted a general audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican in Rome on September 16.

Ms Dixon said: “I am really, really looking forward to it.

“I don’t know if it will be just walking by in a queue, but it could be more.

“They have recorded why we are there and that we are representatives of the campaign for both the martyrs.

“We have had an acknowledgement that they are looking into the case of canonisation for both and that might suggest that they are looking at them being inextricably linked to St John Boste.”

Ms Dixon and fellow campaigner Brendan Dawson met with Fr Seamus Doyle at St Augustine’s Church in Darlington yesterday (Tuesday, July 7) to view a carving of George Swallowell inside the church.

Fr Doyle said he was supportive of the campaign, adding: “The whole idea of martyrdom is part of our history and rich heritage and we learn from that, the continuity of faith.”