Pope honours Maguire Seven gran

The pope wanted to hold Anne Maguire up as an example

A great-grandmother wrongly imprisoned for nine years following two IRA bomb attacks has received a papal honour.

Anne Maguire, 68, of Willesden, north London, was alleged to have passed nitro-glycerine to the IRA in the seventies to make bombs.

The Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor presented the Bene Merenti medal at the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in north London.

It was bestowed on Mrs Maguire by Pope John Paul II three days before he died.

Mrs Maguire was jailed in 1976 - two years after the Guildford and Woolwich bombs - with five members of her family and a family friend, including her husband Patrick, and two sons Vincent and Patrick.

Annie was bigger than the injustice she suffered, and through time and prayer she came right in the end Father Francis Ryan

Two of her children were left to be cared for by family and were returned to her after she was released.

The bomb attacks were among the most high profile atrocities carried out by the IRA.

In Guildford, a device planted at the Horse and Groom pub killed five people - four soldiers and a civilian - and injured more than 100, while in Woolwich two people were killed.

Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong, Paul Hill and Carole Richardson, who became known as the Guildford Four, were jailed the following year.

Later Gerry Conlon's father, Guiseppe, and members of the Maguire family - the Maguire Seven - were arrested and jailed.

Mrs Maguire was sentenced to 14 years but in 1991 the Court of Appeal overturned their convictions and last February Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a public apology to the Maguires for the miscarriage of justice.

Of Mrs Maguire, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said: "Her work for others, her strength as a woman and a human being, her constant faith, her remarkable ability to forgive - these are the reasons why the Pope wanted to single her out and hold her up as an example."

Mrs Maguire's parish priest Father Francis Ryan added: "Annie was bigger than the injustice she suffered, and through time and prayer she came right in the end."