NICHOLAS WISEMAN, ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER - 15 FEBRUARY

 

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Saints celebrated on the 15th of February

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NICHOLAS WISEMAN, ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER

Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman was born August 2, 1802, Seville, Spain; he died February 15, 1865, London, England). The first cardinal resident in England since the Reformation and the first archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Wiseman was one of the chief architects of the 19th-century revival of Roman Catholicism in England.

Wiseman’s Irish parents emigrated to Spain, but after his father died, he and his mother went home to County Waterford. He received his doctorate in 1824 and was appointed professor of Oriental languages at the University of Rome and rector of the English College there in 1828.

When the Oxford Movement was aiming to restore 17th-century church ideals through a return of the Anglo-Catholic church in England, Wiseman successfully preached (1835-36) in London on Roman Catholicism and founded the Roman Catholic quarterly Dublin Review. Thereafter he devoted his life to the Roman Catholic revival in England. Made bishop in 1840, he was appointed vicar apostolic of the Midland district and president of Oscott College, near Birmingham. His sympathy with the Oxford Movement’s doctrine created a rapport with such exponents of it as John Henry Newman and Edward Pusey.

In the 1851 census he is shown as residing at 35 Golden Square, Westminster with Canon Francis Searle who was his secretary, a butler, a footman and three female domestic servants.

The 1861 census shows him living at 8 York Place, Marylebone still with his secretary Canon Francis Searle, together with a housekeeper, a kitchen-maid and a valet.

Because the Roman Catholic revival was gaining impetus through numerous conversions and through a vast immigration of Roman Catholic labourers from Ireland, Wiseman was transferred in 1848 to London as vicar apostolic. Pope Pius IX, deciding in 1850 to restore a hierarchy of dioceses in England, summoned Wiseman to Rome and made him cardinal and first archbishop of Westminster. Pope Pius’s creation of English dioceses and Wiseman’s declaration of it were denounced as “papal aggression” by the English, who burned the pope and Wiseman in effigy on November 5, 1850 (Guy Fawkes Day). In reply, Wiseman wrote Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People. In 1852 he presided at the first Synod of Westminster.

He died, aged 62 years, on February 15, 1865 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, Harrow Road, North Kensington. Probate records state that he died at his home in York Place, Portman Square, London, and that when his will was proved on June 14, 1865 his effects totalled under £2,000.

On January 30, 1907 his body was exhumed and reburied in Westminster Cathedral, Ambrosden Avenue, Victoria.

Cardinal Wiseman was widely respected for his intellect, humanitarianism, and constructive achievements. His celebrated Horae Syriacae (1827; “Syriac Seasons”) contained important original research on the Syriac version of the Old Testament, and his historical novel Fabiola (1854) was translated into many languages.

Several schools have been named after Wiseman, including the Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, Greenford, a high school located in Greenford, West London, the Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, Birmingham, a Catholic secondary school, in Birmingham, England, and the Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, Coventry, a Catholic secondary school in Coventry, England.

Sources:

https://www.londonremembers.com/subjects/cardinal-nicholas-wiseman

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nicholas-Wiseman

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Wiseman