The Catholic church in which Victorian mystic Teresa Higginson was said to have received rapturous visions of the Crucifixion has been saved from closure.
The Archdiocese of Liverpool announced in the summer that either St Mary’s, Wigan, where Higginson used to worship, or nearby St John’s Church will close.
But yesterday Archbishop Malcolm McMahon of Liverpool said he had decided to keep the churches open.
Both churches are Grade II-listed and pre-date the Catholic Emancipation of 1829, with St Mary’s built in the neo-Gothic style in 1818 and St John’s in the neo-Classical style a year later.
