The Cardiff Oratory

General information

John Henry Newman was born in London on 21st February 1801, the eldest son of a London banker. His family were ordinary church-going members of the Church of England, without any strong religious commitments, although the young John Henry did learn at an early age to take a great delight in the Bible. He was sent to Ealing School in 1808, and it was there, eight years later, that he underwent a profound religious conversion which was to shape the rest of his life as a quest for spiritual perfection.

In 1817 he entered Trinity College, Oxford. Five years later he was elected to a Fellowship at Oriel College. He was ordained as an Anglican clergyman and worked first as a curate in the poor Oxford parish of Saint Clement’s, and a little later as Vicar of the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin. His spiritual influence there on parishioners and members of the University was substantial. He worked as a College Tutor, and a little later began to research the first of the many theological works which were to put him at the forefront of religious writers.

In 1833 he went on a tour of the Mediterranean with a friend who was in very poor health. While in Sicily he himself fell desperately ill with fever. He recovered and was convinced that God had spared him to perform some special work in England. On his return home he eagerly set about organising what was to become known as the Oxford Movement. That Movement was intended to combat three evils threatening the Church of England: spiritual stagnation, interference from the state, and doctrinal unorthodoxy.

When studying the history of the early Church Fathers, Newman was shocked to realize that the position of his own Anglican church bore a close resemblance to some of the heretical positions that had emerged in the theological controversies of the early centuries. He was still further disturbed when a few years later many of the Anglican Bishops denounced some of his works; some of them not merely denouncing him but actually espousing explicitly heretical positions. He decided to withdraw from Oxford, in order to think and pray. Together with a few companions he moved to modest lodgings in the nearby village of Littlemore. For three years he lived a strict religious life there, praying for light and guidance. By 1845 his mind was clear, and on 9th October he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Father (now Blessed) Dominic Barberi. He had at last found what he called ‘the one fold of the Redeemer’.

Conversion meant ostracism by many friends and some relatives. Undaunted, Newman went to Rome to study for the priesthood. While there he became attracted by the idea of the Oratory – a Congregation of priests and brothers founded by Saint Philip Neri in the sixteenth century. He established the first English Oratory at Maryvale near Birmingham in 1848, moving soon afterwards to Alcester Street near the town centre, where he converted a disused gin distillery into a chapel. The new community moved to a more permanent home in Edgbaston three years later.

In 1851 the Bishops of Ireland decided that a separate University should be established for Catholics, and they invited Fr.Newman to become its founder and first Rector. It was a demanding task for an older man, but despite the strain of fifty six crossings to and from Ireland in seven years, he succeeded in establishing what is known today as University College, Dublin.

When he returned to England, Newman faced a life of misunderstanding and resentment, even by some in authority, and was even suspected of unorthodoxy. Several projects which he embarked upon met with rejection or failure, including a magazine for educated Catholics, a projected mission at Oxford, and a new English translation of the Bible.

During his old age Newman continued in his Oratory in Birmingham, quietly writing, preaching and counselling (from the age of twenty three he had been above all a pastor, a father of souls). When he was seventy eight, as a tribute to his erudition and devotion, Pope Leo XIII made the unprecedented gesture of naming Fr.Newman, a simple priest, as a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. After a life of trials the news came to him as a joyful relief. He declared ‘the cloud is lifted for ever’.

Cardinal Newman died in the Birmingham Oratory on 11th August 1890, and received universal tributes of praise. The Times wrote: “whether Rome canonises him or not he will be canonised in the thoughts of pious people of many creeds in England.” The Cork Examiner affirmed: “Cardinal Newman goes to his grave with the singular honour of being by all creeds and classes acknowledged as the just man made perfect.”
In 1991, Cardinal Newman was proclaimed ‘venerable’ by the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints. In 2009 the miraculous cure of Deacon Jack Sulllivan through the intercession in heaven of Cardinal Newman was confirmed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, paving the way for his beatification. On 19th September 2010 Pope Benedict XVI presided at his Beatification at Cofton Park, in Birmingham.
When John Henry Newman’s coffin was exhumed from his grave in the Birmingham Oratory’s cemetery at Rednal in 2010, prior to the beatification ceremony, it was discovered that his body had completely decayed during the time since his burial there in 1890. The very few relics of him that remain are lovingly preserved in a small and modest casket in the chapel which has become his national shrine, in the church of the Birmingham Oratory.

His Feast is kept on the 9th of October each year, the anniversary of his reception into the one fold of the Redeemer.