SAINT FEAST DAY 9 OCTOBER: ST JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, CARDINAL

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 9th of October

WELCOME!

SAINT JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, CARDINAL, DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH

⬅️ Doctors of the Church - Complete List

Saint John Henry Newman was born in London on February 21, 1801, the eldest of six children of London banker. He grew up in the Church of England. In 1822 he was elected a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, was ordained as an Anglican priest in  1825, became the Vicar of the University church of St Mary’s, and became a leading light in the Oxford Movement, seeking to recover elements of Catholicity within Anglicanism. 

THE OXFORD MOVEMENT

In 1843 he resigned at St Mary’s and retired to a converted stable block at Littlemore just outside Oxford, to think and pray. He was joined there by a number of his young followers and together they lived an austere semi-monastic life.  Late in the evening on October 8, 1845, an Italian priest, Father Dominic Barberi, came to Littlemore. For several hours he heard Newman’s first confession, and the next day he was received into the Catholic Church. 

HE WENT TO STUDY FOR THE PRIESTHOOD

In 1846 Newman went to Rome to study for the priesthood and was ordained priest there on Trinity Sunday 1847, at the age of forty six. He then returned to England and the English Oratory was founded in February 1848 in Birmingham. Meanwhile Father William Faber had also converted from Anglicanism and he and several other converts joined Newman’s new Oratory. Faber was then sent  to establish the Oratory in London in May 1849.

"COR AD COR LOQUITUR"

Newman was always a prolific writer of letters, sermons and articles, and this continued throughout his life. At the age of seventy eight he was made a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church by Pope Leo XIII. Newman chose as his cardinalatial motto the words "Cor ad cor loquitur" (heart speaks to heart). He lived out the rest of his days, quietly and prayerfully, and still writing, at the Birmingham Oratory. He was taken to his eternal reward on August 11, 1890. 

Information from a leaflet from the Brompton Oratory

Saint John Henry Newman was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 2025.

PRAYER:

O God,

who bestowed on the priest

Saint John Henry Newman

the grace to follow your kindly light

and find peace in your Church;

graciously grant that,

through his intercession and example,

we may be led out of shadows and images

into the fullness of your truth.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity

of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

Amen.