Cardinal Newman declared a saint by the Pope
John Henry Newman is the first English person born since the 17th Century to be canonised. …
Image copyright REUTERS/Remo Casilli Cardinal John Henry Newman has been declared a saint by the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony in Rome.
The open-air service at the Vatican, celebrated by the Pope, was attended by tens of thousand of pilgrims.
Theologian and poet Newman, who died in Birmingham in 1890, is the first English person to be made a saint in almost 50 years.
The Prince of Wales joined the Mass in St Peter’s Square, at which four women were also canonised.
Mother Mariam Thresia from India, Swiss Marguerite Bays, Mother Giuseppina Vannini from Italy and Brazilian-born Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes were also made saints at the Mass, celebrated by Pope Francis in Italian.
Thousands of Britons travelled to Rome to join the celebration.
Carol Parkinson, the secretary of the Friends of Newman from Birmingham, said it was a special and emotional day.
“His integrity, his friendship, his capacity for friendship and loyalty and hard work set a very good and hopeful example to everyone,” she added.
Cardinal Newman was born in London in 1801 and attended Trinity College, Oxford, going on to become an Anglican priest and a leading theologian.
He converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism in 1845.
Newman has been credited with two miracles by the Vatican, curing a man’s crippling spinal disease and healing a woman’s unstoppable bleeding.
The cardinal was beatified in 2010 by Pope Benedict in an open-air Mass in his home city of Birmingham after the first miracle was recognised.
His remains lie in a closed sarcophagus at Birmingham Oratory.
The last English canonisations were in 1970 of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, a group of Catholics who were executed between 1535 and 1679 under laws enacted during the English Reformation.
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