A campaign has been launched for the canonisation of the Catholic priest who heard confessions on the Titanic as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912.

Father Thomas Byles, parish priest of St Helen's Church, Chipping Ongar in Essex, who boarded the Titanic at Southampton on a £13 ticket, was intending to travel to New York to officiate at his brother's wedding. Instead, at exactly the same time as he was to have conducted the wedding ceremony, a Requiem Mass was sung for his soul.

As the ship went down, with the loss of 1,500 lives, he refused at least two offers of a place in a lifeboat and instead remained on board to pray with passengers.

In his homily on the morning of the disaster, he spoke of sacraments being spiritual lifeboats when in danger from the shipwreck of temptation.

Father Graham Smith, current parish priest at St Helen's, said: "He's an extraordinary man who gave his life for others. We need, in very old parlance, to raise him to the altar which means that the Vatican will recognise him as a martyr of the church. We are hoping and praying that he will be recognised as one of the saints within our canon."

The parish website describes how he was last seen leading a group in prayer on the second cabin deck the ship sank.

"When the Titanic struck the priest was on the upper deck walking backwards and forwards reading his office, the daily prayers which form part of the duties of every Roman Catholic priest.

"After the real danger was apparent, Father Byles went among the passengers, hearing confessions of some and giving absolution. At the last he was the centre of a group on the deck where the steerage passengers had been crowded, and was leading in the recitation of the rosary."

Father Byles was an Oxford graduate who converted from Congregationalism while at Oxford.

At the time of the tragedy, a Miss Agnes McCoy, who survived the wreck, told a reporter of the New York Sun that she and her sister Alice were with their brother in the steerage. The two girls were put into a lifeboat and saw their brother swimming in the icy water. They called to him to get into their boat. He tried to grasp the side of the boat, but one of the sailors beat him back with an oar. In a minute one of the girls had reached the sailor and held his arms while the other sister pulled her brother aboard.

Miss McCoy said: "I saw Father Byles when he spoke to us in the steerage, and there was another priest with him there. He was a German and spoke in that language. I did not see Father Byles again until we were told to come up and get into the boat. He was reading out of a leather bound book and did not pay any attention. He thought as the rest of us did that there wasn't really any danger.

"Then I saw him put the book in his pocket, and hurry around to help women into the boats. We were among the first to get away and I didn't see him any more. But there was a fellow on the Carpathia who told me about Father Byles. He was an English lad who was coming over to this country with his parents and several brothers and sisters. They were all lost. He was on the deck with the steerage passengers until the boat went down. He was holding to a piece of iron, he told me, and had his hands badly cut. One of the explosions threw him out of the water and he was picked up later.

"He said that Father Byles and another priest stayed with the people after the last boat had gone and that a big crowd, a hundred maybe, knelt about him. They were Catholics, Protestants, and Jewish people who were kneeling there, this fellow told me, Father Byles told them to prepare to meet God and he said the rosary. The others answered him, Father Byles and the other priest, he told me, were still standing there praying when the water came over the deck.

"I did not see Father Byles in the water. But that is no wonder, for there were hundreds of bodies floating there after the ship went down. The night was so clear that we could see plainly and make out faces of those near us. The lights of the boat were bright almost to the last. They went out after the explosion. Then we could hear the people in the water crying for help and moaning for a long time after the boat went down."

To be made a saint, he must first be beatified, and then at least two miracles must be proven to have taken place after prayers for Father Byle's intercession. Father Smith said: "We hope people around the world will pray to him if they are in need and, if a miracle occurs, then beatification and then canonisation can go forward."