By COURTNEY GROGAN
VATICAN CITY (CNA) — The Vatican has announced that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman will be canonized on October 13 in Rome.
During a consistory of cardinals July 1, Pope Francis decreed that Newman and four other blesseds will be canonized together in St. Peter’s Square.
Indian Sr. Marian Thresia, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family; Italian Sr. Giuseppina Vannini; Brazilian Sr. Dulce Lopes Pontes, and Marguerite Bays, a Swiss consecrated virgin of the Third Order of St. Francis will be canonized alongside Newman.
Their canonizations will take place during the 2019 Special Synod of Bishops from the Pan-Amazonian region to be held at the Vatican October 6-27.
Newman was a nineteenth-century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and cardinal. Originally an Anglican priest, he converted to Catholicism in 1845 and his writings are considered among some of the most important Church-writings in recent centuries.
Ordained a Catholic priest in 1847, he was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, although he was not a bishop. Newman’s conversion to the Catholic faith was controversial in England, and resulted in his losing many friends, including his own sister who never spoke to him again.
The British cardinal founded the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England, and was particularly dedicated to education, founding two schools for boys. He died in Birmingham in 1890 at the age of 89.
In October, Cardinal Newman will become Britain’s first new saint since the canonization of St. John Ogilvie in 1976.
At Newman’s beatification Mass in Birmingham, England in September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said that Newman’s “insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, and into the need for a broadly based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.”
“What better goal could teachers of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity: ‘I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it’,” Pope Benedict said.
The first miracle attributed to Newman’s intercession involved the complete and inexplicable healing of a deacon from a disabling spinal condition.
His second miracle concerned the healing of a pregnant American woman. The woman prayed for the intercession of Cardinal Newman at the time of a life-threatening diagnosis, and her doctors have been unable to explain how or why she was able to suddenly recover.
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