November 9, 2025 - "Saint John Henry Newman"

 

Newman’s settling into ministry as a Catholic priest were full of challenges and difficulties. He soon found himself embroiled in controversies in his new church family.  Newman's writings on such topics as the primacy of conscience, the role of the laity, his non- scholastic approach to theology and his spirit of tolerance contrasted with the reactionary mood of the church in his time.  Newman was scorned by many Catholic contemporaries as dangerously liberal (even though he really wasn’t). Negative reports of his work were frequently sent to Rome. Newman finally received some vindication in his lifetime from the newly elected Pope Leo XIII, who made him one of his first Cardinals in 1879. Newman chose as his motto “Heart speaks to heart.” Cardinal Newman died on August 11,1890, in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England.  He was seventy-nine at the time of his death.

 

Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Cardinal Newman on September 19, 2010, at Colton Park in Birmingham, England. Pope Francis canonized him in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City on October 13, 2019.

 

At the beginning of Pope Leo’s homily on All Saints’ Day when he named Cardinal Newman a Doctor of the Church, the Holy Father announced that he was naming Saint John Henry Newman a co-Patron of the Church’s educational mission alongside Saint Thomas Aquinas.

 

Cardinal Newman’s spiritual and cultural stature, said Pope Leo, “will surely serve as an inspiration to new generations whose hearts thirst for the infinite and who, through research and knowledge, are willing to undertake that journey which, as the ancients said, takes us per aspera ad astra, through difficulties to the stars.”

 

Until next week,

Fr. John