On Sunday 13 October Blessed John Henry Newman will be declared a Saint by Pope Francis. Blessed John Henry Newman was the founder of the first Catholic university (now UCD) in Ireland. He served as the university’s first rector (1854-1858). In his 1993 Encyclical Letter, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendour of Truth), Pope Saint John Paul II, explaining the relationship between conscience, individual freedom and the duty to adhere to objective truth, quoted Cardinal Newman and described him as ‘an outstanding defender of the rights of conscience’.
On 19 September 2010, during his Papal visit to Britain, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal Newman in Birmingham, saying during the Mass of Beatification that he was ‘a man of gentle scholarship, deep wisdom and profound love for the Lord.’
We will pay our own small tribute to Blessed-Saint John Henry over the coming weeks with some of his own reflections and prayers.
