Scottish Catholic Observer

Scotland’s Catholics rallying to help fulfill a dying woman’s final wish to travel to the Vatican have been told she may be able to meet Pope Francis.

Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh has said that he will try and arrange a meeting between Corinne Barber (right) and the Pope after generous Scots began to donate thousands of pounds to her family’s fundraising campaign to pay for her trip, including a steep medical insurance bill.

Mrs Barber, 41 from Leith, was born with a complex congenital heart disorder that could kill her at any time. Attempts to arrange a transplant have failed and doctors have said she has, at most, a year of life left. She feared her lifelong dream of visiting the Vatican, which she told the SCO she regarded as ‘the beating heart of Heaven on Earth,’ would be impossible to achieve as her heart condition means she cannot fly, ensuring an expensive trip by boat, rail and road with medical insurance alone costing £5000.

In a last ditch attempt, her brother Darren Barber, 43, set up an online GoFundMe fundraising page entitled Help with Corinne’s Final Wish in an attempt to raise money to fund her final farewell which has now seen thousands of pounds pouring in from well-wishers across the world.

Archbishop Cushley said that he wholeheartedly supported the campaign.

“It’s a beautiful thing that Corinne wants to make a pilgrimage to Rome, the heart of the Church and the resting place of St Peter, and we would urge people to help her in making that aspiration become a reality,” he said. “We’ll certainly look at what we can do as an archdiocese to help Corinne including seeking a Papal audience with Pope Francis, somebody who I know Corinne has great affection and respect for.”

Mrs Barber said she was ‘stunned at the notion that it may be possible’ for her to meet the Holy Father who she said she found greatly ‘inspirational.’

She added that she wanted to make this ‘spiritual pilgrimage’ because throughout her long illness, ‘when the really low points come, as they do for everyone, I find great strength in my relationship with God.’

The GoFundMe campaign total has now reached more than £5000 of its £12,000 total and Mrs Barber said she had been stunned by people’s generosity.

“I have always been a very private person when it came to both my Faith and my illness, perhaps I simply thought that people would not be interested,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Kelsea Little,  a spokeswoman at GoFundMe.com, said: “It is heart-warming to see how much has been raised in such a short amount of time through the support of friends, family and strangers. We wish Corinne and her family all the best and hope she is able to achieve her last wish.”

—To support the campaign visit www.gofundme.com/nvf8q3sk

—[email protected]

—This story ran in full in the September 4 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.