John Henry Cardinal Newman

John Henry Newman began his career as an Anglican churchman and scholar and ended it as a Roman Catholic cardinal. He was born in London on February 21, 1801, and at the age of fifteen, he enrolled in Trinity College, beginning an association with Oxford University that would last for nearly thirty years.

Newman was officially received into the Church on October 9, 1845 and was ordained to the priesthood the next year. His work with the Church included establishing the Oratory of St. Philip Neri near Birmingham in 1848 and helping to create the Catholic University of Ireland, which he served as rector from 1854 to 1858.

He continued to write as well; some of the major publications of his Catholic years were Parochial and Plain Sermons (1868), a new edition of his Anglican discourses; The Idea of University (1852), a collection of the inaugural lectures for the Catholic University and other academic essays; An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), a treatise on the philosophy of religion; and Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), his classic work of spiritual autobiography.

The 1870s brought Newman special recognition for his work as both an Anglican and a Roman Catholic. In 1877 he became the first person elected to an honorary fellowship of Trinity College; two years later, Pope Leo XIII awarded him a place in the College of Cardinals. He died on August 11, 1890, and was buried in Warwickshire. His epitaph reads, "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem"--"out of shadows and pictures into truth."

Cardinal John Henry Newman will be beatified in Birmingham, England on May 2, 2010.

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